Personal housing plan
All students consider housing location, availability and cost when choosing a university and planning each year. For care-experienced and estranged students, these decisions carry far greater weight due to the heightened risk of homelessness before, during and after their studies. As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reminds us, shelter is a basic need – without it, learning cannot thrive.
Understanding each student’s housing situation is therefore pivotal to supporting their success. Whether this is through a cuppa and a chat, a written formal housing plan, or something in between. We believe that every student should be supported to ensure they have a safe and stable #HomeAtUniversity.
University of Bath
Overview: One to one meetings every semester, each year, for every recipient of the university’s care experienced, estranged, young adult carers or asylum seeker bursary.
The half-hour meetings are compulsory for bursary recipients and with a consistent contact when at all possible to foster relationship warmth and trust. The same agenda is set for every conversation so students know what to expect, are able to reflect ahead of the meetings, and can rely upon a chance to discuss anything specific to them with a staff member appropriately skilled regarding care experience and estrangement.
The meeting agenda sees housing matters given equal emphasis alongside academic progress, careers, finances, and mental health/wellbeing. The holistic form of these appointments openly acknowledges the housing fragility of care experienced and estranged students, plus the known relationship of stress to health and academic focus.
Resourcing: These scheduled meetings are delivered by the Student Retention and Success team of one full-time staff member and one part-time, term-time-only staff member, of the holistic suite of supportive contact for these student groups (plus carers). Key to note is that they do not replace the traditional personal tutor/academic advisor relationship, but rather serves to broaden the university’s touch points in a very targeted fashion. This responds well to the body of research detailing student reticence in disclosing to personal tutors due to stigma or perceived prejudice.
The Student Retention and Success Team is positioned to connect with minimal friction across the university’s traditionally-structured functional services so that a relevant student can tap into the specific services needed for their situation without the need to reveal sensitive personal history to a succession of university staff. Student notes are recorded in a CRM system and can be reviewed by professional staff within Student Support. It is highlighted which students have these statuses so that appropriate support can be provided. The Student Retention and Success Team works very closely with the Accommodation teams, and both sit on Students of Concern meetings. Students of Concern meetings are regular cross-departmental discussions that bring together professional staff from key university services—such as Student Support, Accommodation, Wellbeing, Security, and Registry, to identify and review students who may be at risk or require additional support.
Monitoring/Evaluation: An average of 260 students access the system each year with the service aim based on student-centred responsiveness. Ie the team is not responsible for housing a student but the meeting mechanism ensures housing (or other) matters are explicitly and frequently discussed and plans actioned where needed throughout the student journey.
At present, quantitative measurement of Student Retention and Success, whether care experienced and estranged students buck national trends on drop-out rates, is monitored by the team each semester.
