In an increasingly relentless, challenging and competitive higher education environment, ‘support’ continues to be the balm that is applied when resilience is depleted.
As part of our Member Project 23-24: Growing the HE workforce of the future, ‘Decoding Pastoral Support’, sought to:
- define the characteristics and activities of ‘support’
- understand the impact of providing ‘support’ on ‘support givers’
- understand the importance of ‘support’ work on organisational effectiveness
- explore possible implications of the findings on organisations and identify opportunities for organisational re-design.
Literature review
Key findings from an initial literature review identify tangible and real benefits for students and colleagues in receipt of support and there is alignment to relational pedagogy. Impactful support is contextualised, authentic, relational and boundaried. Some aspects of support are codified in organisations and most frequently the role of the personal tutor is utilised for students. Generally, there is a lack of recognition of support given and received in informal spaces, both to students and colleagues.
Support described between colleagues is not widely referenced, nor is support provided by professional services colleagues. There is an absence of structural recognition and reward in organisations for support or care, and the activities are often carried out by women with an additional impact through a race lens. Against toxic aspects of culture around performance and workload, this compounds the impact on colleagues’ wellbeing and retention.
Focus groups
Key findings from the focus groups identified that the value of care is brought to life in consideration of the absence of it. There is significant emotional labour in carrying out care and support activities, particularly when there is a lack of articulation around the role and the boundaries, leading the scope of the role to feel precarious, with an absence of permissions and protections in place to feel psychologically safe. There was also evidence that taking on these care and support activities could have a direct impact on academic career development and progression.
Whilst there were multiple examples of innovating practices, these didn’t address the dissonance between the espoused purpose and values of our organisations driven in response to our external environment and the lived experience, which contributes to poor mental health in our communities.
In the context of the findings from the literature review and focus groups, we identified three recommendations. Firstly, the importance of questioning our assumptions and beliefs around this work. Secondly, an invitation to co-create a shared understanding of the importance of care. And lastly, the opportunity to build relational capability.
The recommendations are framed as questions, recognising the need for intra and inter organisational sense-making and decision-making as a pre-cursor for meaningful and impactful action taking.