Offshore Student Support
Mrs Jo Cassidy1, Ms Charlotte Long
1Unsw, , Australia
This is about how the University of NSW found a way to offer crisis and therapeutic mental health support services for students stuck offshore. 2020! What a year and as we have moved into 2021, we have continued to battle with the world-wide pandemic that is COVID-19. When C19 started in January 2020, we thought it was just going to be something that affected China, but we soon realised that this virus would be far reaching and come close to home.
As a support service we are tuned into how improved student wellbeing and MH is a key component and directly linked to students and academic success. Based on this we wanted to make sure that our students could access the type of support they needed whether they were in Sydney or their home country.
An assumption was made that our own Counselling and Psychology service would be able to support the Mental Health needs of the thousands of students we had offshore for the duration of the pandemic. We soon discovered this assumption was incorrect – we were informed that Australian based Psychologists could not provide therapeutic support to students offshore due to an indemnity issue.
We needed an alternative!
We will explore the challenges we faced in finding a suitable service and provide an evaluation of how it has enabled us to meet student wellbeing needs and support including the lessons learnt.
Biography:
Jo is passionate about student support for all students and particularly champions support options for students who are offshore.
Charlotte has worked in international education for more than 20 years. She is passionate about giving students the best chance for success in their university life.