Profile

I am directly responsible for the University’s central Student Support Services, which are: Disability Services, Open Door Team, Student Financial Support Unit, and the Student Support Office, which includes immigration advice, international student support, student welfare advice and undergraduate special cases administration.

I also liaise with the chaplaincy team and faith contacts, the health centre and the health protection unit and those with welfare briefs in YUSU and the GSA.

Register of Interests

• Hornsea Carnival Committee: member
• Association of Managers of Student Services in Higher Education (AMOSSHE): member.

Roles and responsibilities

My daily work roughly breaks down into five areas:

Management of Student Support Services: working mainly with my colleagues in the management team to oversee operational work, develop policy, plan and guide development.

Complex case work: I am involved directly in a small number of complex or unusual situations involving students in difficulty.

Liaison: which includes working with the Health Centre, the chaplains and faith contacts, supervisors and provosts and members of YUSU and GSA over a wide variety of issues. I also work with the local Health Protection Unit if we have a student with a serious communicable disease and the Coroner’s office if a student dies. I am also the University’s representative on the Higher York Learners and Support group, which I chaired 2008-10.

Strategic projects: some are at a University level, for example being on the steering groups for the new buildings in Vanbrugh and Goodricke Colleges, the review of the staff counselling service and the current process review of the admission of students with disabilities. Some are more service focussed, for example we are currently implementing a case management IT system across student support services and we are also part of a national project evaluating tools to measure value and impact in student services.

Committee work: I sit on a variety of University committees and working groups, including Student Services Committee, Student Services Consultative Group, Student Support Services Forum, Equality and Diversity Committee, Nursery Management Group, Quiet Place Group and Health Centre Liaison Group. I also regularly attend Special Cases Committee hearings in an advisory capacity.

My vision for Student Support Services at the University

To be a highly effective team of professionals working together efficiently and creatively to support as many students as possible to make the very best of their time at York. Over the next five years this means developing a really effective IT casework infrastructure, improving the ways we measure the impact of the work we do and continually being open to finding new ways to address the concerns of students at the University. It means listening to students, understanding their needs and their experience and distilling that into information that can be used to guide developments at the University.

CV in brief

BA in Chemistry in the mid-seventies at York, where I learnt that I am most interested in how people work, individually and together.

Ten years working for the Richmond Fellowship in Coventry, London and then North Yorkshire, working in, managing and developing therapeutic communities for teenagers and adults with emotional and mental health difficulties, during which time I undertook a wide variety of training, including a diploma in humanistic psychology.

Ten years in private practice as a counsellor, supervisor, trainer (including teaching at Universities of Huddersfield, Bradford and York St John) and team consultant. During this period I completed a M.Ed. in counselling, undertook a variety of roles within British Association for Counselling including being a member of their Standards and Ethics Committee and chairing complaint hearings and co-authored Supervising the Counsellor (1994, 2nd edition 2001).

Five years as Head of Counselling Service at University of Hull, during which time I was external examiner at the Universities of Bradford and Bristol and published The Shadow and the Counsellor (1999).

Three years as the first Head of Student Support Services at University of Hull and for the last seven years in my current role here at York.

Other professional interests

I maintain my career-long interest in supervision, which I understand to be providing people opportunities to reflect upon themselves in their work and learn through that process. I mentor on the Yorkshire Accord programme and currently supervise a facilitator/consultant and a hospital chaplain.

About me

What makes me tick?

At heart I am a facilitator and take great satisfaction in finding ways to liberate people and processes when they have become stuck, enabling them to move forward. I also get a great buzz out of the achievements and successes of my colleagues in Student Support Services.

I am nourished by creating: be that a new service such as the Open Door Team, a new College building, a book or, in my personal life, turning a bowl on my lathe or being part of the team that puts on a successful carnival or pantomime.

I feel proud of working at a highly successful University, an organisation dedicated to learning, and enjoy the challenge of playing a useful part in building on that success.