Webinars for Newly Admitted Graduate Students 2024 - Family Care

Perfect, perfect.

Hi everyone, and welcome to today's webinar In the great UFT tradition, we're going to start a few minutes past the hour just to give other people time to show up. It is a small and intimate webinar today, but we'd like it to get a little larger before we get started to get our board the chance to benefit. So I'm going to switch off my camera for a couple of minutes and then we will actually, I'll leave my camera on so that people at least know that we're here, but I'll meet myself for a few more minutes before we get started.

Well, I'd hope that waiting a few more minutes would bring us a few more students, but apparently not. So rather than keep Helen waiting, I'll get started. First, a very warm welcome to Helen Ready Cats from the Family Care office. She's, I believe, the only student facing Family Care advisor. The others work primarily with faculty and staff, so we're very glad to have her here today.

Just a little bit of housekeeping about how these webinars work with such a small group. I wish we could set it up to switch your cameras off, but unfortunately we are not set up that way so.

We will be speaking to you for a presentation to start with and then moving on to a question and answer. It's a moderated chat, so questions only show up in the chat for everyone to see if either Helen or I.

And we're going to ask to keep the questions really very much on topic. Ellen is here to share her expertise from the family care office. So we're not really going to be covering off other topics unless there's a heck of a lot of time at the end. We have separate weapon. We have held separate webinars.

For rewards and financial aid for.

Mentorship, advising accessibility and health and Wellness. Also for housing. We still have webinars coming up for fee payment and registration and for the Graduate Center for Academic Communication. So please make sure that you direct questions to the appropriate webinar. If you missed a webinar of interest, they are recorded and we have the first three posted on the same page where you signed up for today's webinar. We will not be offering webinars on two key topics that I know are really French of mine for students at this time of year.

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I do apologise. The first of those course selection of enrollment. The reason we don't do that is course selection and enrollment are handled very different from department to department and even to different programs within a department. So we can't give university wide advice. We also have a number of international students who are understandably anxious about making sure they've got everything nailed down for their study permits. But neither Helen nor I is a licensed immigration advisor Canada. You actually have to have a license or be a lawyer to give immigration advice.

So I will be putting in the chat links to the Center for International Experience information for international students, and you can read through that information. And if you don't find what you need, just contact information so you can reach out to them. Thank you for putting up with the housekeeping. Let's keep the questions until the end. And I'm just going to leave myself and switch off my camera and hand it over to today's expert, Helena.

Thanks, Rory. Hi, everyone. I see we have some people here from Canada, some people from India. It's probably very late at night there, so my apologies. So just a little bit about the family care office at U of T.

Some people are always like, oh, I don't remember there being a family care office at my other institution. Well, it's because we're actually a fairly unique office. We're one of the only offices of Rakhine and Canada.

Institutions around the world will have some sort of family care.

Programs and supports, but they'll fall under a separate office. The fact we have a unique office is unique and in and of itself, we're one of UF TS equity offices. Family status is considered an equity an equity status in Canada. So it's something we have to make sure that students are being discriminated against based on their family status.

And that the university is doing everything to support students that have family responsibilities.

We serve U of T student, staff and faculty. As Rory mentioned, my position is unique in the office that I work almost exclusively with students. We have advisors here to work with staff and faculty as well. And we also have a communications coordinator that that helps with all our communications for all groups in the institution. But it's kind of unique because by serving all of the groups.

Often graduate students have young families and they have a lot in common with a post doctoral student or with a young professor. So it allows us to offer seminars and sessions and workshops that all of these groups can come together and enjoy by by being central and and supporting all of the groups.

So if you do the math, we're a very busy group, but we try to take the time for everyone that contacts us. We also hold 50 plus workshops and events each year. So as the session goes on, even though you haven't started your studies yet, you can definitely e-mail our office, sign up for our newsletter and and make sure you're finding out about those those things that are going on and supporting your family.

So just a little bit about us. We provide confidential guidance, resources, and educational programming on topics such as planning for a child, childcare, parenting strategies, and elder care, as well as any other family issues you might encounter. And we connect student, staff and faculties on how to get the best support for their circumstances. Our services are confidential. That's important to note that anytime a student, staff or faculty comes and meets with us, it's a confidential meeting. If we ever have to coordinate or disclose information, we are doing so with your permission.

In terms of when I talk about family, I think quite often when people are on here, they're on here because they have young children or maybe they figure over the course of their graduate degree they might be having children. But just so you know, our definition of family is broad. It's not just.

Students coming with children and students and their partners. It's elder care situations. Maybe you're caring for a parent, maybe you're coming for overseas. You're not bringing your parent, but you're still going to have some care responsibilities to them back home. The family care office is there for all of those situations.

This is a list of our staff at the family care office, so we have myself as the person primarily who you would be contacting with student issues. Kimias are communications person. You'll see her name and she's the one that gets events up on the website, etcetera. Mika, if you're not calling or emailing me, you're probably calling or emailing Mika. If you look under her name there, the family doc care at utoronto.ca, that's our main address. If you're unsure who the question is for, send it there.

And Mika will correspond with you. Mika also previous to her job, was an early childhood educator. So she has a lot of knowledge and sits in on our sessions on choosing childcare for your family. And finally, uh, Natasha is our acting manager at the family care office. Umm, it's worth noting, not that it applies to this group, but we're kind of a double duty office. We're the family care office. We're also the faculty relocation office. So when after your degrees, if you go on to become faculty at an institution, we help with relocation.

Setting up in the institution, et cetera.

Currently, we are located at 215 Huron St. on the 6th floor of the building. UMM. This is a temporary location, but we expect we'll be here for the next year or two due to construction at the university UMM. Our hours are 9 to 59 to 4:30 in the summer and on Tuesdays we have extended hours going until 6:00 PM. UMM students can also make appointments with me on our website.

If you're looking to meet with someone in person, we love seeing people in person, but make sure you check in on the day you plan on coming and maybe e-mail directly with that person. e-mail directly with me just so I know to be here in person on the day you're coming. We are a hybrid office. Well the office is always open. Different colleagues work on different days so you can't always expect to find someone in the office, which again is a very family friendly practice cause a lot of us are parents and.

We like the opportunity to have the hybrid work, but we are always available to you.

So different ways the Family Care office can help you.

Something to think about. We have a peer mentorship program. This is both for young parents and young caregivers.

And older parents I shouldn't, I should make sure I updated this from a presentation for undergraduate students so parents of young families so.

When?

When our peer support, our peer mentorship program gathers, generally the peer mentors have been in grad school for at least a year or a year and a bit. Whereas the members that would join as the mentees like yourself, umm would then be meeting with those peer mentors. It's a good peer-to-peer system because.

You're really just sharing strategies as to what's working with you and they hold a number of sessions, et cetera.

So we also provide supported advocacy for students. So at different times, umm, you might feel your department could be doing a better job to support you with family situation. You might want to review that situation with our office to make sure that there's not an equity concern taking place. We can also help maybe you had to miss an exam or UMM due to extenuating family circumstances and you're looking for letters of support, umm, academic petitions.

I'm sometimes contacted by a Friday students themselves for this info. Sometimes I'm contacted by registrar saying hey I know that this is a family issue and could you support us on this so know we are there to support you when those those issues do occur.

We provide information on both at the SGS leaves available to students for parental leaves and QP parental leave. So that's. If you have TA ships as part of your grad program, you do have.

The availability if you have a child over the course of your degree for a paid leave from your QP position.

Connecting students and staff with campus resources and community resources. We do lots of sessions on finding childcare, how to apply for school, look for care programs for elderly relatives, etcetera. So often you know, graduate students as and I can see from the list here coming from all around the world and they're even if they're just coming outside the city, outside of province, they're relocating their family. So we really help with that process of what to expect for childcare, etcetera.

If you are coming with the young child, please look now if you're going to be looking at either before and after school care or day care, you should be getting your name on the list for childcare spaces now because we do have a childcare shortage in Canada. But if you have specific questions, you can definitely book a meeting with me and we could we could discuss that as well. And finally, we have lots of events for family. We have both a number of virtual workshops. The majority of our workshops are virtual, so you're able to log into them from home, from your lab, etcetera.

And listen in. But we also have great.

Great events that students can come out and meet each other. In the month of September, we'll have an orientation event on each campus that includes a picnic for families to come out and meet each other and get to know each other. Over the course of the year we have tickets to varsity sports events we have.

An international students incoming international students dinner We have a number of events that allow you to meet other families.

In your situation.

And I just want to say thank you for for giving me the time here. I left lots of time for questions because I knew we had a small group and I never know exactly what people's concerns are going to be. I did put on this slide my e-mail if someone wants to e-mail me as well as my bookings link. It's also on the family care website that you can book a meeting if you'd like to meet with me before even coming in to discuss your personal situation. Thanks.

Thanks, Helen. I'd like to, I'll just share a little bit of personal anecdote, if it's all right. It's highly unlikely for those of you who have come, you sought out advice on preparing to meet your family responsibilities while you're here. But it's also important to remember that sometimes unexpected family responsibilities come along. While I was a graduate student, my mother had a stroke and so I had some caring responsibilities there and my father had two hip replacements. None of this did I predict as I was going into.

Into Graduate School, so family care office. What would I do with that? Turns out useful, so fire away. I'm sure you must have questions. We will be sorting through them as quickly as possible. So type away and we'll see what comes up.

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Just.

While you were doing that, I'm sorry, I was just going to grab. I'm just going to grab the link for Helen's booking link and put it in the chat.

No problem.

Oh, thank you, thank you Rory. And while while Rory's doing that, I was going to say keep an eye on our website. I didn't have all the dates here 'cause we're working on getting them up. But during the month of August, we are going to have a number of childcare workshops at Choosing Childcare that talks about all the childcare options available in the city of Toronto. We also have a preparing for childcare that we get one of the managers from one of our UFT childcare sites to come and.

Sort of provide information on what happens inside a childcare center in Toronto and Canada and what you can do to prepare at home and also what to expect within the childcare center. So those are often when people are coming in. Some of the questions, we don't have our particular session around school. I am working on a blog post to have up about it, but if you have questions about schools, private versus public, where should you be sending your child to school? I can answer any questions about that if you'd like to book a meeting or send me an e-mail as well.

Aha, here we go.

So ATAR is worried about the possibility of being penalized for missing school due to a child being sick. And is that something that the family care office can help with? First and foremost, there's usually not a penalty for missing school unless you miss a lab or something important like that, like a one off event. But Helen, can you, can you take it away?

Yeah, I was gonna say Rory probably has more knowledge on the on the admin side of how the the institution works. But I do know that students have a way of reporting absences in ACORN and the student and the student system.

But I agree there's usually not a penalty. What I do recommend though?

And obviously there's a difference between a child being sick once or twice and if a child like has a long term illness that we have to look at, can you stay in the course? Can you not stay in the course? That's when we get involved that we're like.

Is this an accommodatable situation? Is this, umm, you know, let's say, uh, something that you're like, it's, it's beyond the, it's beyond the drop date. I've already paid for the course. That's where we might get involved in petition the department and say, hey, they missed the state by three days, but they had no idea that the situation was going to occur, etcetera. That's when we come in and it's on an advocacy role, but just on, on a straight person.

Personal role, what we talk about when we have our orientation.

Which we have at the end of September. The info if it isn't on our website yet, we'll be up soon.

We talk about the fact it's good to disclose to your professor at the start of the year that you have those childcare responsibilities. It gives you a way to feel out which professors, which lab supervisors are going to, you know, be most flexible, and also gives you a chance to tell your story from the start and have control of the situation before something like this occurs.

Obviously it's a personal choice and we can talk through different reasons you might do it, but I think it is good for students to disclose this information up front. That way when a child does get sick, inevitably the night when you're trying to, you know, get a paper in or something like this, it's not your first time letting your professor know that this is a situation that's going on in your life. So those things do occur. It's definitely, you know, one of the ongoing concerns of students. But we we find that in general, people have found their their.

Their administration to be very, very understanding, their professors to be very understanding about a short, short leaves like a day, two days. But if it's an ongoing thing, that's where we might have to get involved.

And it's not uncommon to see a student sitting in class with a small child coloring. It does happen from time to time.

It does, it does happen as something to add on that, Rory, the in the, in the school of graduate studies, there's actually a document that goes out on the administration side, umm, explaining that as a best practice, a student shouldn't be bringing their child to every class. For sure. You should have childcare, but professionals should be understanding that if that's a one off and that has to happen, that it can happen. So they're realizing it's graduate students, they're dealing with adults that have family responsibilities and these things are going to come up.

The other thing I would say is if you're going into a research streaming program, one of the most important relationships you'll have is with your supervisor and it's important to make sure that your supervisor is aware of any family related issues that you have or any responsibilities that you have. It's very important to manage that relationship from the start and make sure that the expectations are clearly laid out up front and the family care office can help with that. You can also get help from the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision. They work primarily with research stream students, but they do.

Have a lot of resources on how to establish from the get go a healthy supervisory relationship.

Great question.

Is there anybody else with questions?

If you feel comfortable, please feel free to put into the chat just what family responsibilities you are coming with. Is it small children? Is it a dependent partner? Is it parents? Or let us know what program you're going into and perhaps we can offer a bit more insight on that.

Ah, I get to approve Otara saying thank you. You're very welcome, Attara.

OK, I'm not seeing a lot of questions coming in about any questions coming in at this stage. In case you're frantically typing, we're going to hold off. Oh, here we go.

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Isabel just wanted to be sure and find out about the office just in case. Excellent smart to be prepared and find out in advance.

And as it's turning out, a very small time commitment to come and find out in advance. So we'll wait another 30 seconds or so to see if there are any other questions. And if not, then we'll end the session early. Everybody gets a bit of their day back. And thank you so much for coming, Helen. Thank you again. It's always a pleasure to have you in. And I know that the support you provide for students is so important. So thank you so much for the work that you do and the sessions that you provide about it.

No problem. Thanks for having me, Rory. Uh, just one last thing that definitely once you're on campus, like come in, see our office. I didn't get into everything we offer on here, but check out our website. We actually have a book borrowing. Umm, we have if you have to come with a child, we have some toys. We are a breastfeeding chess friendly, friendly spot on campus. So we are a place that students are welcome, are welcome to come check out as well.

I didn't want to even enter into it in this session because we don't manage it. But there is family housing on campus as well. Some of you might have already got spots there. There is a long waiting list. So if you, this is your first time hearing about it, probably aren't getting in for September. But if you're in for a PhD or something like that, maybe it's something to consider in the future. But I do have embedded advising hours during the year on Thursday afternoons, family housing. So if you're coming and you're going to be closed to campus or you're going to be in family housing.

I almost guarantee I'm a face you're going to meet in person on campus during your experience if you're coming with a a young family or expecting to start one while you're in Toronto. So I look forward to meeting all of you.

And I will add that as a whole, the university is getting much more baby friendly and much more open to recognizing that it's the dads as well as the moms. So for instance, if you're caught on campus and need to change a diaper, our diaper changing table is in the all gender accessible washroom here at SGS and you should feel comfortable breastfeeding. But if you want to place with a private screen to sit behind, we have a we have a screen in the lounge at SGS for exactly that purpose.

That's amazing. That's great to hear. No, it's definitely and like you said, and a lot of the leaves too, I should have mentioned while there are leaves, it's parental leaves. There are leaves for, for both birth parents and non birth parents within SGS and within QP. They differ slightly due to pregnancy leave, etcetera. But those leaves are there and it's very often the non birth parents and the fathers that take those leaves and it's, it's so great to see.

I think that's fair window to have questions asked and I haven't seen any new questions. So once again, Helen, thank you so much. And I think it's time to call it a day. Take care everyone, and we'll see you in September.

Bye everyone.