How We Support our Students in a Cost of Living Crisis
What was the context?
Since 2022 people in the UK have experienced the highest rates of inflation and increase in energy bills for 30 years. This impact on increased rent, mortgages, food and utilities with no equivalent rise in income has been deemed a cost of living crisis.
We know that people from widening participation backgrounds were more likely to be affected by this crisis (for example low income households, care experienced people, disabled people and Carers) and that at Leeds Trinity University we have a significant number of students who meet these criteria due to our social mission of empowering people regardless of background to achieve their potential through education.
What did we need to consider?
Prior to the academic year of 2022/23 a working group was formed at the University which brought together colleagues from the Executive, Student Support, Money Advice, the Student Union, Careers & Placement, Accommodation, IT, Student Records and Estates. The purpose of this group was to ensure that any investment in our students from a cost of living perspective took a collaborative and holistic approach.
To make our approach specific to the needs of Leeds Trinity University students we needed to have numerous voices in the room (not least of those of the Students via the Student Union). Whilst the thinking was leading to considerable investment from the University we knew that this crisis was likely to have a serious impact on our community and that following the impact of COVID on our student’s mental health (where we saw a 68% increase in referrals to our Student Mental Health & Wellbeing service) we needed to introduce some financial resilience to the potential impact of money worries.
What did we do?
Following the working groups conclusions and the support of our Senior Executive the University invested £500,000 in a series of initiatives. These were based on the areas where we knew our students were seeing some of the biggest financial pressures along with areas where we knew students were likely to cut back on to their own potential detriment (i.e. skipping meals or attending on campus less).
We know that stigma can be a significant barrier to accessing financial support so involving our Student Communications team in our approach was vital; Students needed to know that not only was this support available but that there was no judgement or hurdles in the way of accessing this. One aspect of this was to bring all the initiatives together under the branding of “Helping you with the cost” with it’s welcoming logo and use across campus and online. It was also important that whilst there was discussion involved with students when accessing some of our support this was designed carefully to ensure it was seen as supportive conversations to help open up options of support rather than replicating benefit questionnaires and interviews which they may have been experiencing outside of our University and which may have contributed towards a traumatic experience of help-seeking.
The initiatives introduced at Leeds Trinity University under the “Helping you with the cost” banner are:
Removal of library fines
Introduction of the “Grub Hub” where students can access free non-perishable food and hygiene products.
Free laundry service for resident students
£2 hot meals every day in the dining room
Increase in the University hardship fund
Study Support fund payments which can be made direct from Student Support to cover lower level bills (utilities, mobile phones etc) as well as being used to distribute shopping vouchers and to cover travel costs to campus
Loaning of digital devices
Increased placement allowances for travel costs
Support with costs of graduation gowns
How is it going?
In the first six months of these initiatives we have seen over 5,000 of the £2 hot meals purchased in our dining room, just under 600 students have received free laundry cards, 221 students have collected shopping vouchers, 58 students have been supported with travel costs to attend campus, 72 students have collected food and hygiene products from our Grub Hub and 24 students have been supported to pay utility bills (outside of larger Hardship Fund payments) in order to help them remain at University. We have also been able to meet the demand of our Hardship Fund applications (a 54% increase on the 2021/22 academic year so far) meaning we have been able to award 125 loans (totalling £115,000) in the first six months of the 2022/23 year.
What this demonstrates to us is confirmation of the current research on young people and cost of living pressures as well as our anecdotal experience – that the students we support are experiencing phenomenal increases in financial pressures and due to our response to these we have been able to ensure that those in most need within the community are able to eat, pay their bills, travel to University, wash their clothes engage with their course, access medical evidence when needed – in short the basic needs of a human being that shouldn’t have to be sacrificed in order to study.
What are we going to do next?
We are in the process as a University of reviewing the data so far, considering what our students in the 2023/24 academic year will need to manage the weight of the ongoing cost of living pressures and hope to be able to announce these measures soon. Once we have confirmed our plans we can then look at relevant infrastructure within the University, work closer with our Student Union and academic colleagues to ensure any initiatives are fully embedded across our University.
About the author
Toby Chelms is the Head of Student Support & Wellbeing at Leeds Trinity where he oversees the Disability, Mental Health, Money Advice and Student Support services. Toby’s core profession is as a Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist and prior to moving to HE in 2019 he spent 10 years working across the Third Sector and NHS. He has experience in clinical supervision, service development (within the NHS, Third Sector and Higher Education). Toby is also the current Chair of the Leeds Student Health and Wellbeing Partnership Board and was the founder of the British Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Psychotherapies (BABCP) CBT Therapists in Higher Education Special Interest Group.
