Webinars for Newly Admitted Graduate Students - Family Care 2023

Hi everyone, and welcome. I see that we have seven people who've joined us already, and we're gonna expect to hear more, but I just want to get it quick. Welcome to everyone. Today, as incoming students, you're making the right choice to find out more information about programs and services that can help you when you arrive at UT.

But I want to.

You.

Give a few fair warnings before we get started. The 1st is that the way this platform is set up, we can't see or hear the participants who are attending, but we can get your questions in chat. It's a moderated chat format, so you type in a question. If it's on topic, I'll approve it and Helen Reddy Katz is joining us from the Family Care Office will do her level best to answer those questions.

We're going to be a bit ruthless though, this this seminar is specifically for students with family care responsibilities. So those are the questions that we're going to be answering today. Now that's a pretty broad category of questions, so we'll keep an open mind, but today's not the right forum for questions about all awards or about course enrollment or about other issues like that.

Other fun fact courses Sorry that most classes at UT start at 10 minutes past the hour, so I'm fully expecting a small influx of students who are UT students which.

Showing at 10 minutes past the hour.

And any final final warning is that this sort of this webinar including the questions in chat and then answers put in the chat.

This is being recorded and will be posted, so please bear that in mind as we post any questions that you have. And what we'd like to do usually is go through the presentation from Helen as smoothly as possible and then start going to moderating the questions in the chat. So if you have questions that are really immediate for something that's coming up as part of health presentation, put that in the chat right away. I'll see if we can take a break and answer that question. But otherwise, leave the questions.

Yeah.

Hello, do you want to take over? I will switch myself off.

Definitely. Thanks so much for introducing me, Rory. As Rory said, my name is Helen Reddy Katz. I am a Family Care advisor within the Family Care office and specifically on the Family Care Advisor Student Focus. The Family Care office serves student staff and faculty at the three campuses at the University of Toronto, but.

As your incoming students, I am the person you are most likely to be dealing with if an issue surrounding your family comes up. So to tell you a little bit about the family care office. The family care office is unique if you're sitting there going, oh, I applied for other institutions or I've gone to other institutions and I didn't know about the family care office. There aren't many that have one. Lots of people support. Lots of institutions support families with.

In their student life or within their HR and equity. But at UFT we are a unique office on to our own.

We are one of the UFT's equity offices. We're founded over 25 years ago and as I said before, we support student staff and faculty members and their family. So I mentioned this because quite often the students coming to study and it's their partner that comes with them that's setting up childcare, setting up school, etcetera. Your partner is unlike other UFT services, is able to directly reach out to us as a support person in your family.

And access our services or request a meeting.

So little bit about what the Family care office offers UM.

I will say this is a picture of our old office. We've actually been relocated. So it looks very much the same. We brought our furniture and books, but it looks a little bit different. If you do pay us a visit, we provide confidential guidance and resources.

We do educational programming, and this is especially exciting as we return to the new normal after the pandemic we do. Many of our sessions are held virtually, such as this one, especially when they're informational, but we do try to get residents Odom person and students Odom person to meet each other.

Um, we do sessions around planning for a child, accessing childcare, accessing schooling for your children within Toronto parenting strategies and also elder care because the family care office is not only limited to parents, but also those of us that might have elder care responsibilities or responsibility for siblings or other family members.

Our hours family care office is open 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to Friday Tuesdays we remain open till 6:00 PM and that is usually me if someone's looking for us after hours. The family care office is as student service on campus open, you know.

Unless there's an exceptional reason, open every day Monday to Friday. But it's not always the same people there. So if you're looking to book a meeting with myself, or you're looking to meet with a specific person, we recommend emailing or calling in advance and seeing if that person is going to be on site.

And we are located at 215 Huron, which is on the sort of on the far West side of campus, but close to where your class is if you're on the Saint George campus are located. And if you are going to be attending our Scarborough or Mississauga campuses, we do like to come on site a few times a year for events etcetera, but we are happy to hold virtual meetings so that those students have access to our services as well.

Here are the people working in our office. We have Kay, our manager, Natasha, who is one of our colleagues that supports a lot of the education and and communication sessions, myself and Mika. And if you e-mail or call our front desk, it's usually Mika who you'll be talking to, and she's a great resource as well.

If you're coming to attend UFT with family responsibilities, some of the main topics that come up in the main things you might be interested in speaking to us about is planning for a child.

Maybe you weren't expecting to become pregnant in Canada. Maybe it's just your first pregnancy within a new country. So.

We're really working through what that looks like, from prenatal care to finding childcare, etcetera. As we mentioned before, finding childcare in schools, helping you navigate the neighborhood you live in and what the expectations are around finding childcare and how to prioritize the different types of childcare that exist in Toronto. Parenting strategies and taking elder care and care giver leaves. So maybe something happens that you have to travel, you have to miss classes. We really work with you that way. We also work on an.

Advocacy perspective. So if anything comes up unexpected within your family, we help you make those initial steps to meet with your department or talk with your professor and really work out a way for you to either continue in your studies if possible, or or to be able to take the time off necessary to navigate that lead.

Other supports like we said giving service and supports for student carers and that's cares for any part of the family, integrating work and studies and families. So just talking about strategies and ways of coming up with work life or school life balance. We also you know family goes through all sorts of different issues, so we also work with separation and divorce resources. And finally although it doesn't necessarily apply to this group, it's important to note that part of our.

Part of our office also works with faculty relocation. So similar to how many of you are relocating to Toronto, we also work with faculty that are relocating to Toronto.

Services are offered through appointments, webinars, and the website. If you're looking at booking with us, I don't want to overwhelm you with information, but I advise you to check with the Family Care Office website and under students, one of the first things it says to book a meeting with me and you can book right into your account, right into my calendar and book 20 minutes that we can chat, go over any of your concerns, questions about your transition to UFT.

And so there's our website. There you can also e-mail us to look at subscribing to our newsletter. If you're interested in attending our events, finding out about anything going on at campus, our newsletter is one of the best places to look. We also have a UFT parent exchange coming back after the pandemic, but like a buy and sell on campus. So especially if you're coming and you're looking for affordable items for your child or for your family.

The UT parent exchange the good way to find them. If you have just questions about where should I get this and something family related, I'm happy to answer those questions as well.

We are on Instagram and Twitter, Facebook, I think our Twitter's going a bit by the wayside, but definitely Instagram I think is our our number one social media right now. We also have a great blog. Ohh, thank you for putting up the parent exchange link, Rory.

Thank you very much.

That was very quick. Um, but I'm happy to take any time for questions anyone might have at this point.

Or anything they'd like to ask.

And I'm just going to rejoin the group so that I'm here to make sure that as soon as questions come in, you'll be able to approve. And we've had two questions about recording that I'm not going to include in the chat. One is whether or not this session will be recorded. Congratulations, you're recorded. This has all been recorded and will be posted. We've also had the question of where to access this.

Chat and sorry, this, this webinar and other webinars as recorded and they're going to be on the same page where you registered, so let me just put the link to that.

In the chat as well. So you can link to that and bookmark it. It usually takes us a couple of weeks to get these up. The platform actually finalizes the media and combines the different media streams. So the slides, the sound, our cameras that are takes it about a day to process that and then we have to give our communications team time to post the recordings. So usually we expect the recordings to be up in about two weeks of the session.

Alright.

Does anyone have any questions for help? Who really is a fantastic resource if you're coming in with family responsibilities to campus? And I'd like to emphasize that this doesn't necessarily mean children. This payment, this spouse, a partner, it can mean your parents. Little known fact is that one in four students, at some point in their period of study, will actually be the primary caregiver for a dependent relative. It happens to me when my father had a simple replaced.

All right.

So Nadia is new in Toronto, and she has a question about what happens with the babysitter, but it looks as though she hit enter before the question was complete.

So now you are asking you to finish up that question and then we'll approve both of them at the same time. I try to provide you with an answer.

Well, nobody is doing that. Do people want to just put a little note in the chat with her child, prove saying where is the you're coming from and if you feel comfortable sharing what what family member are you bringing with?

OK, so now day's question is about tax credits for babysitters, so I'm going to put that in the chat.

Excellent.

Umm for having tax credits, the process come during concerning the tax redemption. So I'm not a tax expert, but I will say if you're coming internationally, there you through the Center for International Experience. They do have tax clinics at the end of the year.

In terms of tax credits for childcare, you can usually obtain any tax credits or sometimes through your union as well. There's there's redemptions that can come through for childcare and usually as long as it's not done by an immediate family member or like a grandparent. And if the person issued you a tax receipt then you can include them towards tax receipts for childcare, just that that you've that that you have received childcare. So it doesn't necessarily have to be through a licensed.

Care provider. But you need some proof that you did have a formal arrangement, that this was a legal arrangement and you'd have a tax receipt and then when it does come time to file your taxes, bring that along and that will be used towards your taxes.

Mm-hmm.

And I've just put a link into the chat. It's the Center for International Experiences Tax Information, and if you support, at first it looks as though the page is blank, but if you Scroll down, you'll see that there is.

Or they hosted I think 8 information sessions for filing income taxes last year.

Where they brought in tax experts to answer students questions so you'd be able to check with them.

About filing, but one important thing to remember is that you'll be filing taxes for 2023 in April of 2024, and if you're going to need tax receipts for that, you need to ask for that. You need to make sure that you have the documentation in place in 2023 so it's available for you when you do file. So by all means, check out the Guide to Income Taxes for International Students, which is a PDF document on that site.

And make sure that you're collecting the receipts and other documents you need to file taxes. Great question.

And I can't speak for this year, but I know in the past that is. Well, the Center for an International Experience doesn't support families in all portions. They did support families when it came to their tax clinics. So filing taxes in Canada or any country, I'm certain is not an easy task. And as students, there's so many free or low cost tax clinics that I really advise taking part in them.

All on the same page that I put in. If you Scroll down there are there's a link to the Canada Revenue Agency information on Nope, Let me put it.

The community volunteer Income tax programs. They're actually volunteers who will help, who will help you file income taxes.

So just to repeat, we're getting questions about recording again. The recording for today will be available on the same page where you registered for this session. Let me put that into the chat again and the recordings will be posted there sometime in the next couple of weeks.

All right. Any other questions?

One thing, just while we're waiting for other questions that I'd mention along those lines of redemptions for childcare, depending what program you're in, whether or not you have a TA ship or GA ship, there's different ways in the university that there are refunds for childcare, paid parental leaves, etcetera. So again, in Canada, there are protections around you if you do find yourself praying under have to take time off for support childcare.

And definitely what I'd say, without getting in the details of each, if you find yourself in any of these situations, reach out to us. Well, the family care office doesn't have financial aid. We can direct you towards a financial aid depending on your situation.

If you once it's posted, if you take a look at last week's webinar from the Graduate Awards Office and financial aid, they refer to a number of these. So for students encountering unexpected financial emergencies, there is the USGS Emergency Grant.

Have contractually obliged to say that tuition is not an unexpected financial emergency. It is expected.

But we we have had students whose children have suddenly needed dental care that's not fully covered by their plan, so they replied to the emergency grant on that basis.

Also, if you are in a doctoral program that provides funding, there is a range and you can make a rankings to take parental leave when a new child arrives, whether by birth or adoption. It is only available for students in funded programs.

But I can put the link to that in the chat as well.

Sarah is asking.

And your question is not entirely clear stuff. Have you asked is this just for people with children or are couples also part of this? Is there any financial help for couples?

Umm.

But.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. The parental grant is very explicitly only for new parents.

Um.

So I I don't really understand that question Sarah is asking about faculty relocation services. I'm afraid, Sarah, that faculty relocation services are not available to graduate students, so that's not something that we can help with in this conversation.

But if you do have relocation questions related to your family, the link I put up earlier about to access a meeting with me, I'm happy to help but do a similar process, but we don't have any finances to help with relocation etcetera. But if you have questions just about the process or just about maybe maybe you're counting on getting into family housing and you don't have a spot and you're thinking about where should I live.

Make them layer. Where's a good school to access? Those are all things we consider.

So far it is asking if there's any support for after school programs and assuming she means for the children of students in funding programs, there wouldn't be any distinction between funded or unfunded students. But I don't. I'm not aware of any support for after school programs.

For children of your T students, are you aware of any healing?

So yes and no and it's interesting just to give some context, childcare in Canada is in a really interesting time that it's there's a lot going on and it's it's it's lowering and cost really for the six and under age group. I have a feeling that over time we'll see changes to make a more affordable after school programs.

If you have a tea shop or AG ship through QP, there are reimbursements for childcare through that which may or may not include after school programs. Again, it changes to your year with the different agreements. There may be some sort of reimbursement there for after school programs, after school programs programs though. When you do pay your taxes you do get tax receipts for after school programs so it doesn't pay for them, but there are tax benefits to whether it's regular everyday.

The school. But even after school, sports, et cetera, there is, there is.

There is a tax return benefits to that, but unfortunately in Canada right now childcare, the zero to four year old, the preschool and infant childcare is getting quite affordable but there still is a bit of issue around after school care. So if that's something you have a specific concern about, I'm happy to meet with you to discuss that further.

And when it comes to the summer, UFT runs very popular day camps for local children. And if you're a UFT student putting your child into that, you get a 15% discount. So I'll put the information for that in the chat.

Sarah's asking for just a bit of an elaboration, Helen, on support for integrating work studies and family. Can you tell just a little bit more about the sort of?

As supports, the Family care office is able to.

The first students to or help with.

Definitely. So one thing I do over the course of the year, I set up a series of presentations through a lot of our student life partners, academic success, career services, etcetera, but contact people that I feel are especially good at targeting or.

Students with caregiving and family responsibilities so.

Whereas as a UT student you could access a number of sessions quite often, you might feel like you go to the session you're like. This is written for a.

You know, I'm more of a traditional student, a student without these family responsibilities. So we do time management and stress management sessions. So we do a lot of proactive sessions and a lot of proactive advising around these things. And sometimes if there's not a session and you're like, I'm really floundering, it might be a matter of meeting with me and saying, I'm Mr. Sham, reaching out to academic success. And I might help you bridge that goal because I know there's a few advisors that know a lot about supporting students with family responsibilities.

You know, and more and more geared towards supporting traditional students. And when I say traditional students, I mean single students coming in their early 20s. So more and more I laugh and say there's no traditional student anymore. But often many of our services assume certain certain things about a student that might not be true if you're coming with the whole family, maybe a few years older than a traditional student, maybe not. So we look at those factors.

So that's what we do in terms of proactive, in terms of reactive, maybe your life just isn't going the way you thought it would be and you're just like where do we start? We don't have a formal accommodation process such as the way the accessibility office was, but we do help you advocate for yourself and we will work with you and your department because we're also there to support departments etcetera to make sure you're accommodated in the best way possible.

Like I said, whether that's helping retain you as a student helping you through this spot, or if you need to take time away from studies, making sure that's as seamless as possible as well.

Acting Asked again about recordings. Once again, yes, all these sessions are being recorded. Today's session is being recorded.

They will be posted. Recordings will be posted on the page where you registered for this for this session, or you put that in the chat again. And it usually takes us about a week to 10 days to post the sessions. So don't go looking for a recording just yet. Take a look back next week to see about the graduate awards session and then following that, the other sessions that are taking place this week and next. Mohammed wants to ask a question about insurance. So Mohammed.

This may or may not be the right thing for that. I can't tell for from that. So please go ahead and type the complete question. And in the meantime I will jump in with answers on two questions that we do often get about health insurance at UT for both students and for their family members so.

If you're from Canada, you know that each province provides very basic health insurance for all its residents. In Ontario, that's known as the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Those programs that were very basic, They don't cover things like dental care. They don't cover vision care. Most prescriptions aren't covered. Physiotherapy or other rehabilitation services aren't covered.

So.

Incoming students that you would T are enrolled in at least two insurance programs. Three insurance programs if they're international to provide better coverage. Let's start with international study.

Because international students are not covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, students get coverage through the university through the imagination of who named University Health Insurance Plan or you have.

And it is.

Possible for students who are bringing family members with them. To enroll family members in, you have to make sure that they have the coverage that they need. Let me put the link to you in the chat right now, OK?

So if you are an international student who will be enrolled, it is mandatory that you be enrolled in this program. And if you have family members, you are welcome to enroll them as well.

Now all students, whether they're international students with UKIP or Canadian student with their Canadian Health Insurance, is also enrolled in two programs offered by the graduate student.

There's one plan for dental coverage, and there's one plan for this supplemental health costs that aren't covered by over every you have.

And again, like you have, international students or actually even domestic students are welcome to enroll their family members in these programs as well. So I'll put the information for that into the chat. Here's the link to the UFT graduate student union, health and dental care, and you can read about enrolling family members, you can read about reading out, you read about what's covered. All that information is there.

For the two links that I've just posted, if you have questions about UKIP, you'll need to contact the Center for International Experience.

If you have questions about those other two supplemental programs, you'll need to contact the graduate student.

And those contact details are on the pages that are listed.

So Mohammed, if your question was about another kind of insurance, let's see if we can answer that for you.

Ah, yes, we just covered that. So yes, you're welcoming to enroll any family member who has come with you in.

These these insurance plans.

Some something I'll add to that is if you do find yourself taking a pregnancy or parental leave while part of this health plan, you can arrange that you'll have to pay the the university portion. But if you don't have another health insurance, you can arrange to have this insurance bridged over the course of your pregnancy or parental leave. So it is a great plan.

Have, especially if you are coming from outside of the country and you might not have another health insurance provider.

Lilium is asking whether a spouse can attend meetings or sessions about.

Finding work now as far as Career Center is concerned, their services are only for students, not for family members, however.

A lot of their events are online, and so if you were to attend one of their information sessions virtually and your your spouse were to listen in, there would be no problem with that.

But they wouldn't be able to make any appointments or use any services. Helen. Are there any informal information sessions through the Family Fare office about one of them?

Yeah, We similarly, we run into the same problem with career centers sometimes, but.

Probably about once a year we make an arrangement for them to hold the session and that partners can attend to get basic information. When a partner is looking for support around career, I often refer them to the Cultural link or settlement centers and some of the other career resources in the City of Toronto. Library system has great career resources, but again that that your partner is welcome to e-mail or meet with me and depending on the circumstance I can I can send.

I think so. Relevant resources so.

As as Rory said, they are not directly.

Allowed to access the Career Center, but often, especially since you're a partner, it's since you know often you need a UFT resource or welcome to listen in and get that information. And there's a lot of public sessions and if it if it if it's arranged through us, your partner is always welcome to attend and get that information.

Yeah.

I'm just going to put a link in the chat to Culture Link, which is the community settlement organization that Helen mentioned.

And I am going to throw another link in the chat that I should have had in my.

In my session and this is for our orientation session that we have in September. So again it's a virtual session. We go over in more depth a lot of this information once you're here and also we haven't had all the dates yet, but we are going to have in person picnics on each of the campuses surrounding that time period so that those that come with family responsibilities can meet each other and connect.

And the School of Graduate Studies also offers a university wide orientation session for graduate students.

The date has not yet been announced, but it's almost always the first Tuesday in September after Labor Day.

So the date will be posted at the link that I've just put in the chat.

And I'll most likely be there. So you'll most likely see me in real life at at least one of these sessions.

Yes, we we we bring in the partner offices to to help. So you'll see Helen there if you come to our other sessions on Wellness or accessibility services, you'll see our embedded advisors there as well. So it's it's it's a great day to find out about the resources that are available to.

Yes, yes, Sessions very often held on the first day of public school in Toronto. So if that's the case, if you have school aged children, we could all, you know, commiserate and celebrate that the kids are back to school that day.

Sounds good to me.

I'm not seeing any more questions, but I'm sure that there's someone out there who is still typing away, so we'll just hold off few minutes to see if some more information for some more questions come through.

OK.

So we answered Mohammed's question. He was taken care of.

Thanks for confirming the help anyone else.

So it feels as though that's the end of the session, but what I'm going to suggest is that Helen and I will stay online for about another 5 more minutes, just in case something comes through. So before any of you leave, please give me a chance to thank Helen for offering today's session. It's so important for the university to remember that our students are not just.

Students, they have a whole life that surrounds them as they come through, come through their degree programs and that very often that means taking care of family members.

So thank you so much, Helen, for the services that your office provides and for today's session to Orient students to work those services. And we'll just hang out here for a couple of minutes to see if anything else comes through. And if not, we'll end the session.

So thank you all for participating and thank you Helen for your help.

Thanks for including us. It's.

The the thing I want to say to the students that are there, just remember that.

You're not alone in this. I think often you feel like you're the only student bringing your family with you. But I have to say from so I see so many students doing it for a variety of different reasons. But I think especially post pandemic, a lot of people are going through career changes, reconsidering their roots etcetera. And it's so great to see all the families on campus and we we love supporting students with family responsibilities.

And.

One last time, Yep, this session has been recorded and we will be posting the recording sometime in the next two weeks.

At the same page where you registered for today's session.

So here's that link.

One more time.

All right. On that note, Helen, thank you so much.

Thanks, Rory.

Your day and everyone else will be because it was a shorter session than we anticipated, so please enjoy the free time this year.

Take care everyone, and we look forward to seeing you on the next fall.

Bye everyone.