ACSD brings their best selves to providing services to students

No matter if it is their first day on campus or they are in their final year at King’s, our students have a wealth of health and wellness resources that they can access.

King’s also has registered social worker Emily Carrothers on hand as our Campus and Community Social Worker, to help students navigate issues they may encounter.

King’s has also formed connections with community resources, including Good2Talk and the Mental Health Crisis Services that students can reach out to.

But it does not end there. King’s is continuously evaluating their services in order to improve their health and wellness programming. This includes conducting an annual feedback survey of all users of those services, whether they are one-time users of a single service, or have used multiple services multiple times.

“We listen to what our students are saying and see what services they are accessing,” says Joanna Bedggood, Associate Director – Student Wellness. 

Bedggood says that “students vote with their feet” – attending those services that appeal to them – and ACSD can respond by altering services based on feedback and attendance. As an example, in response to the student feedback, ACSD has added services available in the evening to accommodate students’ schedules.

The ACSD team provides services for a wide range of issues from the personal (including depression and anxiety to grief and loss to sexual violence) to the academic (from study strategies to exam preparation to career resources).

Data shows that the resources are being used by students. In the 2022/2023 academic year, students attended 5,195 appointments across all of the services, a 13% increase over the 2021/2022 academic year and an average of over 100 per week.

The reception to the efforts of ACSD and the programming has been very positive.  Nearly 80% of students reported that their service was valuable and the same number would recommend the service they used to a friend. Service quality was rated as good or excellent by 93% of personal counselling users.

Nearly 90% of accessibility users said that these services played a role in continuing at King’s, and one in every two students using the services said personal counselling and the campus social worker were influential in them continuing at King’s.

Bedggood says the members of her ACSD team are constantly upgrading their skills through professional development, taking courses, doing readings, keeping abreast of new research in the field and meeting with their peers at workshops.

“The people that work in ACSD, they do it because they care about our students and want to provide the best possible services to them,” Bedggood says. “We want to bring our very best selves to providing services to students.”