Welcome to our newsletter for staff to facilitate awareness and better support for their students.

Wellbeing Canvas site:

Thank you to everyone who has been promoting and adding students. Every taught student across the university has now been added. As it currently stands, over 6000 of them have actively accepted it to be on their dashboard with only approximately 5% declining it.

Canine Cuddles:

The wellbeing team are collaborating with Student Engagement and Enhancement to host canine cuddles with canine concern, a charity providing therapy dogs. We will provide promotional materials and how to sign up and will be in contact with people soon. For locations & timings, please check this site!

Wellbeing Stalls:

We are going to carry on additional wellbeing stalls across the campus as it (mostly) worked really well in semester 1. If you think it would work in your area, please email Naomi Harris on healthandwellbeing@sussex.ac.uk to get one booked in. We can either come along with generic leaflets, or something more specific. For example, we are having a dedicated session for global around neurodiversity collaborating with a disability advisor.

Student Loans:

A large number of students are receiving their student loans very shortly. We are arranging for someone from Breakeven – a local gambling charity to be on our stall on Thursday 30 January (first Thursday available). Please do refer students here if they present with any gambling concerns.

Exceptional Circumstances:

This year for A1 the deadline is the same for students on all levels of study (including ODL) and is on Monday 27 January. Please make sure that you are referring students to this process.

Training:

I’m hoping to set up a series of training but finding the right time for this is tricky. During teaching is hectic, exam boards are busy, but the rest of the summer people tend to take leave. I would be grateful if people could share what they think about timings: https://forms.office.com/e/Dg6H1aXu7E. My gut is to do this in July running all sessions twice over the month hybrid so that it covers the more quiet period and by being run twice over the month avoids people’s annual leave but I would be interested to hear if this works for other people.