Earlier in the summer I was approached by Campaigns Officer Andrew Tranter and Marissa Lewis, a predecessor of mine turned subwarden. They had concerns over the training available to halls subwardens, the backbone of pastoral care for first year undergraduates. Subwardens have previously only been offered basic first aid and fire marshalling training; the general feeling was that this fell far short of what was required.

Subwardens deal with an astonishing range of incidents during their duty hours. Anything from students locked out of their rooms, someone having too much to drink and loud kitchen parties to homesickness. At the extreme end of the spectrum, it is relatively common for them to be faced with serious problems of student wellbeing. As demonstrated in the Mentality report, Imperial has a very high prevalence of mental illness in particular anxiety and depression, similar to other elite universities.

It was broadly agreed that subwardens needed some basic training in Mental Health First Aid. This would firstly improve their knowledge, skills and confidence enabling them to get students talking about their mental wellbeing and signpost them correctly to the best source of help. The other (maybe less obvious) benefit is that MHFA training will give the subwardens the tools to support each other as a team when faced with these serious problems.

We presented the issue to Professor Denis Wright, Director of Student Support. His response was that mental health training was offered to subwardens; however an overwhelming proportion of the subwardens said this was simply untrue.

After a brief battle, Prof Wright agreed to fund MHFA lite training for all subwardens as well as the full 2 day course for all wardens and assistant wardens.

This is a good start; however I have heard that there are still problems within the halls pastoral system which have been the frustration of wardens for some years. I’ll be chasing these up next. For now I’m determined that Prof Wright’s commitment to fund this training is not empty words and not forgotten in the future.