Student Support Services
Annual Report 2012/13
Vision for Service Excellence
The aim of Student Support Services is:
“To provide high quality professional support that enables students to make the best use of the academic and personal developmental opportunities available to them at the University of York.”[1]
The 2012/13 academic year saw Student Support Services (SSS) focussing on maintaining the quality of its provision by delivering an increasingly visible set of services via the Student Support Hub model. The challenge for the academic year was to maintain our services against a backdrop of raising expectations from students (their parents) and our academic and professional colleagues whilst managing various changes, challenges and opportunities which are outlined below.
Summary of Key Strands of the Service Improvement Strategy
Embarking on the first academic year in our new locations- ensuring students and colleagues are aware of these and experience a benefit from these changes. / Footfall and interaction with the Student Support Hub is demonstrably Higher with over 12,000 recorded interactions with students and colleagues
Retirement and recruitment of Director with Section Heads acting up on key projects – with SSS as a whole overseen by the Deputy Director to mitigate any potential impact on students and departments.
/ All SSS teams maintained and developed as planned with no reduction in provision or levels of service.
Implementing the National Scholarship Programme - systems and bursaries developed in a short timeframe. / All eligible students received the various offerings under the NSP in a reasonable timeframe.
Increasing case loads of the Special Cases team having assimilated the Postgraduate Taught Special Cases function. / In spite of a large increase in student cases the special cases team delivered an ongoing and sustained service.
National and International impacts of 'Austerity' and conflict- on students / Students from various conflict zones retained and sustained. Welfare Advisers, ODT and SFSU teams supported students impacted by financial austerity and e.g. reduced mental health services.
Neuropartners undertaking the management of non-medical helper support- for disabled students / A successful transition of support with less than10 complaints raised, all resolved.
Supporting the pilot of a College Welfare case management system- as SSS moves towards an increasing and wider support role. / Successful pilot achieved with case management system rolled out to all colleges for 12/13 academic year.
Next academic year will see changes in the vision and strategy of Student Support Services which will be taken forward by the new Director working closely with SSS Section Heads in collaboration withprofessional and academic colleagues across the University of York community.
Summary of Service Usage Key Data (Highlighting Key data and key trends)
The following data highlights the impact Student Support Services currently has in its aim to support student success. SSS will shortly publish a range of infographics to highlight the current impact of the various services on the student experience.
Student Support Hub / 12,724 recorded contacts
Autumn Term ~ 5064
Spring Term ~ 3321
Summer Term ~2300
Disability Services / 1586 students registered
10% of all York students
Open Door Team / 1616 students accessing the service
Over 10% of all York students
Student Financial Support Unit / Distributed £7.4 million to 3,676 students
Almost 1 in 4 York students benefitting
Use of Customer Feedback
Alongside qualitative comments from the National Student Survey results and other wider surveys including those undertaken by YUSU and GSA the Open Door Team, Student Financial Support Unit, International Student Support, Disability Services and Welfare Support all send a feedback survey to students who have accessed their service. This feedback is then used for service improvement or to confirm that current approaches are effective.
Business Challenges and Opportunities
A number of challenges and opportunities have become apparent or further apparent during the 2012/13 academic year. Some of these are applicable across the various teams and some are specific.
General challenges and opportunities:
- With the exception of the Open Door Team and the Special Cases Team case management systems are needed across the Student Support Services to improve the student experience enabling interactions to be tracked, captured and analysed leading to continuous improvements for students but also more efficient ways of working for student support staff.
It is not evident that a 'one size fits all' case management system is available or viable at present and other opportunities and other potentially available options must be explored including exploring links with planned CRMs for use by Admissions and other External Relations departments. The risks of developing systems that provide a smooth experience transitioning students in to the University but then having no comparable system for the transition through and out are various and are very likely to adversely impact on the student experience in a variety of ways.
Specific Challenges and opportunities:
- Special Cases: As identified in this year's report to Senate by the Special Cases team the current volume of complaints and the process of handling these are unsustainable within the current resource in spite of attempts to remedy the various systemic and resource challenges that arise. Regulatory change is urgently required and an independent evaluation of the current approach could be a useful approach to plan a way forward. A process that is prompt, fair and meets the needs of students and departments should be achievable.
- International Student Support: having established good visibility and success in the delivery of orientation and ongoing advice a more strategic development should be explored to add value to the international student experience and the support of departments in ensuring a positive student experience from a variety of international student perspectives.
- Student Support Hub: frontline staff have adapted well to the hub model. The raised expectations of students, parents and colleagues provides the opportunity of developing a more customer focussed approach to service delivery alongside promoting resilience and well-being strategies to students by demonstrating (modelling) such practice in their work.
- Student Financial Support Unit: the rapidly changing and shifting landscape in Higher Education has exposed fragilities in the SFSU systems and their interface with the wider university systems which need urgent attention so the student experience is not adversely impacted by systemic deficits and as a result of historical ad-hoc system development which can now no longer easily adapt to the rapid and various financial changes in bursary and hardship funding as well as scholarship provision.
- Disability Services: Staffing levels are low in comparison to other Russell Group universities and the current way of informing departments of reasonable adjustments is not a best practice model. Opportunities exist to improve systems and ways of working by operating in a more proactive and collaborative way learning from other successful university approaches.
Future Plans and Developments
The move to the Student Support Hub in Market Square with the satellite teams in Sally Baldwin and in the Careers building has produced some challenges which have been well managed by the teams. The whole SSS team should be congratulated for managing this transition alongside the additional challenge of the long serving Director retiring.
Interim arrangements, led by the Deputy Director, have been successful. The contact data collected over our 3 locations (see Appendix 1) over the last year demonstrates an increased footfall via the SSS Hub in Market Square and that the 'one stop shop' model would appear to be working well.
SSS must now consolidate and capitalise on this by:
- using data to plan services as effectively as possible,
- becoming more visible,
- becoming more proactive rather than the current reactive approach,
- communicating better and working more collaboratively with academic and professional departments in order to improve our student's experience whilst at York and beyond.
- helping them develop (or improve) their resilience, employability and helping them challenge circumstances that impact on their academic success.
To be successful SSS needs to model some of the resilience we are trying to foster in our students and aspire to be exemplary in serving the needs (but not necessarily the wants) of our students and their academic departments.
We will aim to achieve this using a strategy based on the following operational objectives in the key areas listed i.e.:
- Data,
- Case Management,
- The College Pilots,
- Collaboration and Networks,
- Communications (including social media),
- Employee Engagement.
To achieve the above a Strategy and set of Operational Objectives have been developed and are available to view at
Future Challenges
We aim to meet the needs of our students in a rapidly changing world whether they be primarily based on campus or elsewhere (including online students).
SSS must continue to develop services that underpin all our students’ success by collaborating with academic departments, colleges and other support services.
Moving forward on this will require an evaluation by the Director of:
• current resources and expertise,
• routines and processes,
• appropriate expertise and competence
• responsibility and capability
Some branding work will need to be undertaken to ensure all students and colleagues are aware of what SSS is and can offer. As a management team within SSS we will need to work together to ensure we progress forward and up-skill ourselves and our teams to achieve our aims of being more public, collaborative and proactive toensure a continually improved student experience.
Jill Ellis and Peter Quinn
Deputy Director and Director, Student Support Services
January 2014
[1]Comprehensive list of Aims and objectives available at