Supporting Health and Wellbeing

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Supporting Health and Wellbeing Review of YSJSUs WellU Programme

Karl Swales (Sport Coordinator) & Matt Walton (Student Opps. Manager)

Background 

WellU was created to tackle mental wellbeing and physical fitness for staff and students alike.

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The sessions for WellU have been designed to be affordable, accessible and for all abilities.

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Sessions are designed to be fun for everyone and a chance to meet new, like-minded individuals.

Creating the WellU Programme 

In 2017/18 WellU was mainly focused on staff and students physical fitness.

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2018/19’s programme includes much more than this.

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Some of the new sessions include; Sports Massage, mindfulness, WellU cheerleading, film night, yoga and many more.

2017/18 Impact So

what were the positives of WellU last academic year?

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By the end of the year we had 323 paid members for WellU.

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Each session ranged between 0 to 25 members with an average of 12 participants in each session.

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Quantitative data was collected throughout the year allowing the WellU lead to see which classes were most successful.

Challenges

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Getting students to participate within the sessions e.g. mindfulness

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Facility space. Being a small institution there is minimal space for sessions.

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Variety. Going forward I would like to be able to run unique fitness sessions to encourage students and staff to get involved with the fun side of fitness. This could be Arial yoga, dog walking or other varied sessions.

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Membership numbers vs participant numbers. Last year we had 323 members of WellU and 376 participants. Currently we are using paper registers however I would like to change this to the use of AMS.

WellU 2018/19

2018/19 

Sessions have been restructured to fit around students timetables; for example we have introduced a Late-Risers HIIT session to appeal to those who don’t like to wake-up early.

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Disability sessions, such as blind football, have been added to make the programme accessible to as many students and staff as possible.

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Time to Talk, mindfulness, eat well move more and sports massage have been added for students wanting to access sessions that offer more than just fitness.

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A membership system has been added; bronze £5 for the year, silver £10 and gold which is £15 for the entire year. This allows for students to access a range of sessions for a very low price.

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Some more of our new sessions this year include Pilates, Cheerleading, Basketball and Military fitness.

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We have also started collecting quantitative and qualitative data through questionnaires, participant trackers as well as specific case studies.

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As well as all of the above, we also have employed 16 student-staff members providing opportunities for work experience for the students of YSJ.

Future Plans 

The aim this year for WellU is to double memberships, ensuring more mental wellbeing sessions are included, to have a strong database of quantitative and qualitative data for the programme.

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Looking forward, we would like to see WellU running with double the current members, with opportunities for day trips such as, visits to nearby cities and to also have a greater number of students using the time to talk sessions and other wellbeing classes.

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By developing qualitative data in 2018/19 cases can be built to see the success of WellU and how it can affects students lives whilst at university.