Webinars for Newly Admitted Graduate Students - Accessibility, Health & Wellness, Mentorship & Supervision 2023

All right. Good afternoon and welcome everyone to the.

Good afternoon and welcome everyone to this, the 4th, I want to say in a series of webinars for newly admitted graduate students. So a big, warm welcome to you from the School of Graduate Studies, but also today we're welcoming you from three of our partner offices.

These offices are grouped together because I like to think of them as the problem solving offices that jump in and help students when they're navigating difficulties.

With us today are in order that you will be hearing from them Suzanne Horn from Acceptability Services as he's a Cayenne from the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision as well as Lower and Pace from the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision And last but very definitely not least, Sean Martin from Health and Wellness.

And just to give you a sense of the structure, although Suzanne and and Sean technically work for student life, they have their offices here at the School of Graduate Studies to make it easy for students to need to access their services to find them. The Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision is actually part of the School of Graduate Studies.

I'm gonna do a little bit of housekeeping before handing off to Suzanne to take over to deliver the land acknowledgement and her material. We're going to be going through the offices in the order that I listed the speakers for. Now we're going to ask you to hold questions until the end. Questions are moderated so you'll have a chance to type in the question you want to ask, but those will only show up in the general chat if one of the hosts of the webinar approves them. So if you've typed something in.

During the presentation it's just sitting there, not being added. Don't worry, we will be reviewing it for the question and answer session.

We are going to be pretty ruthless though in terms of what kinds of questions get approved. We have three offices today talking about a complex range of services. And so if you have questions about enrollment and courses, graduate awards and financial support, those are great questions. But this is the wrong place and time to be asking them. So we're going to be really quite ruthless on that front.

And finally, I want to reassure you that if you have to step out for a minute, or if you're called away for whatever reason, this session is being recorded and it will be posted to the same page where you found the links to sign up for these webinars. But our platform is finicky and it can take it a few days before the video is properly finished, and then it takes another few days for our communications staff to get the updates onto the website. So don't look for this video till at least a week after the session. So don't start looking.

Until July 20th at the very earliest. So without any further ado, I'm going to thank the speakers and hand over to Suzanne to introduce you to the services offered by the Office of Accessibility services.

Thanks very welcome everyone. And I'm Suzanne. I'm one of the accessibility advisors with accessibility Services and I'm working on location with the School of Graduate Studies.

So I'm just going to Rory. I'm not seeing the slides here.

There we go. Alright, so as I said, I'm just going to give you an overview of accessibility services and what our office has to offer.

Thank you for moving those slides. So I'll start with the land acknowledgement. So we wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron, Wendat, the Seneca and the Mississaugas of the credit. Today this meeting places still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we're grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

So what is accessibility services? In our office, we strive to provide equitable access to education to UFT, students with disabilities, health conditions, and diverse ways of learning. We collaborate with the university community to identify and remove barriers for students, as well as foster inclusion within learning environments.

Our office provides a range of programs for students to help them build their academic skills, cultivate community and feel empowered to design their own university experience.

Through a collaborative, individualized, and affirming accommodations process, we support students to achieve their academic goals, to engage in personal skill development and learning process, and to navigate and fully participate in their academic life and beyond.

Can you just advance the slides for me please?

Hi, Suzanne. We're on to what is a disability on my screen. If you're fading in and out of it, I think the bandwidth may be a little.

Low at your end.

OK, thanks Ferrari. I'm getting a little bit of feedback here. OK, I'll do my best here. Let me know if it's still a problem.

So what is a disability? When we're talking about disability, we're referring to the functional impacts that students experience as a barrier within their environment and we're specifically a barrier to their academic experience. So this is connected to the legal frameworks that protects people with disabilities in educational settings, workplaces, et cetera.

Our work essentially is anchored in the Ontario Human Rights Code, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act or the AODA, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and the UFT Statement of Commitment Regarding Persons with Disabilities, which states, and this is simply an excerpt, the University will strive to provide support for and facilitate the accommodation of individuals with disabilities so that all may share the same.

Level of access to opportunities, participate in the full range of activities that the university offers and achieve their full potential as members of the university community. Now, in terms of types of disabilities that our students present with, this certainly is not an exhaustive list, but in accessibility services we serve undergraduate students, graduate students, professional and non degree students with disabilities and those.

Students may live with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, a chronic health condition.

Concussions or head injuries?

Learning disabilities, mental health concerns, mobility or functional disabilities, sensory disabilities or temporary disabilities or injuries, For example, broken bones or severe sprains and strains.

And who accesses the service? And for the year 2022-2023, that school year, we had a total of 6054 students registered with Accessibility Services and of those students registered with us, nearly 90% had non evident disabilities.

And I've uh that total as well, 30% of students registered had more than one disability for which they were seeking accommodations.

And the the numbers here are a little bit small and difficult to read, but in terms of breaking down the pie chart of of who students register or which students register with us and why are they registering? The big slice of the pie chart here on the left is mental health, and I think that says 54%. Then we have over here in the orange slice students with ADHD, in the yellow we've got learning disabilities.

And in the blue, chronic health and systemic issues. And so as you can see all of the disabilities that were mentioned on the previous slide are here in varying percentages, but there is quite a significant proportion of our students that do present with the mental health concern.

And what do we do? So in accessibility services, we work with all of students, faculty, and staff to provide access to students with disabilities to learn and to demonstrate what they know. We implement academic accommodation plans for tests and exams in course assignments and experiential learning opportunities or things like placements or practicums. Students might be familiar with the the accommodations process if they have had access to accommodations.

In high school or during previous degrees and potentially at other schools or at UFT, and we can support them with the transition to accessing accommodations here at UFT.

In an accessibility services and that UFT as a whole, students are expected to meet the same essential academic course requirements with their accommodations, and it's important that the academic integrity of learning is maintained.

There are a number of academic accommodations that students may access, and this again is certainly not an exhaustive list, but some examples of accommodations include testing accommodations, closed captioning, extensions for individual assignments, reduced course loads if and when possible. This is a little bit easier to do as an undergrad student. Typically graduate programs tend to offer part time or full time courses, but.

There are, you know, options that we can consider their practicum placement and or lab accommodations, support animals accommodations for comprehensive exams, thesis or dissertations, and oral defenses.

Funding for disability related services, adaptive furniture materials in alternative formats, sign language interpreting considerations for alternatives to oral presentations, accommodations for living in residence and also program extensions.

In terms of the supports that we have available at Accessibility Services, there are quite a number and a few are listed here. So we do have access to adaptive technologists and they work with students to assess whether or not they may benefit from some adaptive technology to support them with their learning needs.

Our learning Strategists are also available to help with skill building strategies around tasks like time management, organization, priority prioritization, et cetera.

We have an ADHD group and this is an opportunity for students in a group setting to develop strategies to manage the challenges and to harness their strengths. They may focus on things like organization and prioritizing work, managing procrastination and stress with healthy habits, and learning ways to manage their time and finish their school projects.

We have study hubs and these are scheduled times to set and meet steady goals. Students can work on their assignments or readings, or simply study in a quiet virtual space.

The social association for students with ASD is a chance for students with ASD to connect and develop new friendships.

Virtual accountability check-ins are offered to students as an opportunity to connect with accessibility services, staff and peers twice a week.

The Peer Connections program is an informal space to connect and discuss topics relevant to their disability.

The Talking to New People program is an online opportunity to learn and practice social and relationship skills with other students, and there is actually through grad talks.

And talking to new program geared specifically toward grad students and then we also offer support around career education and various associated supports.

Should I register with accessibility services? You may be asking yourself, and the answer is yes. So accommodations are student driven. We encourage students to start the process of registration early, and you may want to try out university without the use of accommodations, and we certainly understand that. But we do encourage you to access the office early and then decide how you might use your accommodations throughout the academic year.

For example, you're not obligated to use your accommodations on every single assignment or test if you don't feel that you need them or don't wish to use them.

As you can imagine, there are certain peak times in this semester and typically when you tend to be busy with your academics. As a student, our service tends to be quite busy as well, so you might consider registering as soon as you're accepted or early in the summer. And this is great that we have the chance to connect today and and with many offices we are open all summer. We do have deadlines every semester for registration and that's simply to help ensure that you have access to your accommodations for the beginning of this.

Master as well as her final exams and these are things that are typically posted to various websites as reminders and also shared in different forums and via e-mail, specifically from our office when you do register for us. Sorry with us.

So how to register? The first step is to complete an online registration form. Then you would submit that documentation and that you have completed by your treating practitioner. So for example a doctor or a psychologist and you can review our accessibility services website and that will outline the documentation needed to support your disability.

The next step would be to attend an intake interview with an accessibility advisor like myself to discuss the nature of your disability or disabilities, the symptoms impacting your academic functioning, and the essential requirements of your program.

And following this meeting, students are given access to their their accommodation letter with which has information about how to use their accommodations.

And then finally, accessibility advisors are available throughout the school year to support students with their ongoing needs.

In the next couple of slides, just um or debunking some myths about accessibility services, so I'll jump in here. So will everyone know that I'm registered? And the answer is no. You get to decide which courses you use your accommodations in. As I mentioned earlier, you may not wish to use your accommodations for every assignment or test, so that's really up to you.

Will my registration show up on my transcript? The answer here is also no. Registering with our office does not show up on your transcript. And will everyone know my disability because I'm registered with your office? The answer is no. We hold your documentation privately and confidentially and will not share this information unless you grant us permission to do so.

Will my professor smirk me differently because I'm registered with accessibility services? Again, the answer is no. Professors are responsible for assessing all students equally.

Does it cost money to register with accessibility services? And again, no. Registering with our office is included as part of your student fees.

Will I be the only student registered with a mental health disability? Absolutely not. Over half of students registered with our office have a mental health diagnosis for which they're seeking accommodations, and you'll have seen that in the pie chart. With that, I think it was 54% of our students registered with the mental health diagnosis. Do I need to disclose my mental health diagnosis to accessibility services? And the answer here is also no, when you complete the certificate of disability.

With your healthcare professional and they don't need to disclose your exact mental health diagnosis. The important piece for us really comes down to the functional impacts that that condition is is presenting us in your life.

And how to access our team. So all of our accessibility advisors hold drop in hours and that's an opportunity to provide answers to time sensitive questions on location. So typically we are working in the office three days a week and remotely 2 days a week. And as well students have requested continued access to virtual support and so we can be accessed via telephone Ms. teams or of course in person.

Our advisors also have an auto reply with important information and who to contact in their absence.

There is also access to peer advisors, A chat on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 11:00 to 1:00, and Tuesdays from 11:50 should you have quick questions that you're looking for an answer to. And you can also connect with our front desk in three ways you could arrive in person. The office is located at 455 Spadina Ave. on the 4th floor, Suite 400. This is right at the corner of Spadina and College.

Um above the Tim horton's. There you can e-mail the office at accessibility services at utoronto.ca or by phone.

So I think as Barry mentioned, we're going to hold questions to the end, but I'm happy to address them at that time. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Suzanne. That was very informative and very time efficient as well. There were some questions asked by students who were hearing a bit of glitch on the audio from Suzanne. Those cleared after about a minute and a half once the other participants turned off their cameras and muted their microphones. So I'm going to ask that we keep those microphones off and those cameras off as we move forward just to make sure that there's enough bandwidth for everything.

Come through. So thank you Suzanne. We won't see you on camera again for until the end of this or just the question and answer session and I will invite Aziza to switch on and to join us.

OK. Can you see me OK, Rory and hear me OK?

Ah.

I can hear you just fine. Do you want to take the slides forward or would you like me to continue moving?

I no, I can take the slides and I think I've done it. Let me just double check before you disappear.

OK.

Work.

Perfect, Got it.

OK, good.

You on the other side.

Oh, perfect. Thank you. I'm just going to reject my screen a little bit. OK, There we go. Hi, everyone. My name is Aziza. I am the new incoming director for the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision. We're also known as CGMS. That's kind of a mouthful. My case coordinator, Lauren Pays, is here. Her video is not on. It's OK, but she is with us just to watch the presentation. I'm quite excited to tell you about CGMS because we are a new service and.

We address some pretty important needs within the graduate student, graduate, supervisory relationship and the whole community at UFT.

So I'll tell you a little bit about what CGMS actually does because we're so we're new service and a lot of people don't know who we are really what we're about, but we are a service that addresses the interpersonal issues that do come up within a supervisory relationship. So your supervisory relationship is quite unique and when you really think about it, you might not actually have another relationship in your lifetime quite like the one that you have with your faculty supervisor they become.

Perhaps a friend in some ways. They become a professional colleague in some capacities. They might also be your boss, you might be in a lab with them, or they're actually paying you for work and paying you for the research that you're doing. So it's a very unique relationship. And when you think about any relationships that you have in life, they could be romantic, they could be with your family, it can just be a friendship or a professional relationship. There is bound to be some kind of challenge that will come up, and it doesn't indicate that anybody.

And the relationship is necessarily bad, but it's just part of being human. We tend to have difficulties with our relationships, and because the supervisory relationship is so unique, there's a higher chance that something might not go well. And so CGMS was born out of a lot of focus groups, meetings with lots of stakeholders, lots of surveys and need that was communicated by graduate students, but also a need communicated by faculty. So we somewhere somebody could help with the interpersonal.

Aspects of that relationship. And there's also a lot of research that indicates if the interpersonal parts of the supervisor relationship do not go well, it can impact somebody's academics, the quality of their research, how they progress through a PhD, how they progress through a masters as well. So that's where CGMS comes from, is to make sure that when something does start to go wrong in that relationship, there is a space people can go to where they can get some type of support. And I'm just going to read from the slide just in case.

People can't see because I realized the slides are kind of small on here, but our vision statement is ultimately to ensure that graduate students and supervisors experience and mentorship and supervisor relationship that is characterized by several elements. So we're hoping that these relationships can be characterized by respect, inclusion, and support of the whole person. Because you're not just a student, you're not just a researcher, you're a human. You might have a family, you might have a job outside of school and your person outside of, like all of your academic responsibilities.

We also hope it's characterized by a continued learning and collaboration by both the supervisor and the grad student in a shared responsibility and commitment to advancing academic and professional goals. So our mandate for CGMS really sums this up beautifully. Ultimately, we want to support successful mentorship and supervisory relationships. So we do this through many different services projects we.

Have a service delivery model, which is what actually makes us really unique within SGS. We don't just do workshops and education, We actually offer confidential one-on-one services, not just for grad students but also for faculty members as well, because we realize there's not just one person to that relationship, there are two people to that relationship. We also do lots of education and outreach. So I'll talk a little bit about what our workshops look like later on, but our workshops are very much focused on skill development.

And again, we do these for both grad students and supervisors. We separate these groups so we do workshops only for students and workshops only for faculty. So there's a little bit of safety if you have questions or concerns that you want to bring up in these groups and.

CGMS for the past about year or so, because we did open in November 2021, has been working on policies and some processes for faculty members and grad students because there really isn't a lot of great information out there in terms of what is the best practice for a supervisor relationship, what is the responsibility of the student and what is the responsibility of the supervisor. It's not really clearly defined anywhere. So CGMS has worked really hard on building those policies and those.

Expectations, you can actually find them on our website and there's gonna be a link to our website on the last slide. They are the first versions of those policies and best practices. We have a new set of those going through the pipeline that you FT of course when you're passing any kind of policy, you're procedure or process that has to go through many different groups. So our hope is that these new revised policies are going to be available sometime in the fall.

So how do we actually, um, what's our commitment to supervisors and grad students? Like, How were we actually like, like addressing these things? So we really have this person centered, solution, focused approach. It's all about the person. We might have some ideas about what might be a better fit, but ultimately it's what you are coming with, It's what you're presenting with. It's what you hope for. You are the person or your faculty supervisor. You are the ones who understand your relationship best.

So we'd like to take an approach of hearing your story and then we go from there. We pursue like different options that feel like a good fit and ones that don't feel like a good fit. We at least know they exist. We try to be very timely and responsive. We don't like the idea of people waiting weeks to get a response from somebody, which can happen when services get quite busy. But we really do try our best to respond to people within a few days at the most if we can. And I'm booking one-on-one sessions if that's what somebody is looking for as soon as possible.

The provision of high quality training as well with our workshops and we we really value keeping our resources up to date. UFT is a very large institution and every system is changing in some capacity, whether it be the name or just the service itself and how it's delivered. So we really want to make sure that if people do come to us, we can assist in some system navigation if we are perhaps not the right fit.

So how can we actually help at CGMS? So we can offer some consultation and advising. This is just an opportunity to unpack what's going on. We can debrief the situation if there is something that happened with your supervisor and we can begin the process of identifying any of the, oh, I just got a message that audio is really wonky. Oh no. OK. I apologize if my audio is not working very well, is it?

I I think, I think you're OK. I think the problem at this stage is Suzanne's Internet connection.

OK.

So it's possible that we will be answering questions.

OK.

Suzanne will be answering questions via teams that will if if need be. Lucas has kindly volunteered from the participants that he had a bit of sound trouble and then he refreshed and it's fine now.

OK, OK, good to know because I've got message popped up and I thought, Oh no, it's everything I said, not actually been heard.

OK.

OK.

OK.

It was on my end, so fingers crossed. If any participants have audio issues, try clicking refresh and see if it helps. If not, I am watching the chat to see if anybody else brings up audio issues.

OK, somebody said most of it was understandable. OK, that's good enough.

Back to my slide, again we offer consultation and advising. This is a chance to unpack, debrief, anything that's been perhaps going on with your supervisor really identifying and this is where like the person centered approach comes in, but really identifying where the unique factors that are contributing to your case are. You maybe registered with accessibility services and you have accommodations and those accommodations aren't being considered during your academics, During your oral examination, During qualifying examination like where are they not perhaps being considered. Are you in your.

Second year of your PhD or eighth year of your PhD, that's of course going to make a difference. And so we really want to understand like what are the unique factors going on for you that's contributing to this situation. And the hope is that we can develop some kind of strategy to move forward. So this is where the system navigation piece comes in. So we'll brainstorm options. What's available? Are we the right people? Do we need to talk to the chair or do we need to have maybe a facilitated conversation with your supervisor? Do we need to refer you to Wellness or accessibility?

Um, do we need to escalate it further? Like what's the context of the situation? And we will of course stay involved. So we do offer facilitated conversations and mediated conversations. So the difference is that if you have something going on with your supervisor, perhaps you've had a really large argument, you're not sure what to do. Maybe you've expressed boundaries and those boundaries have not been met or they've not been respected. But you really value the relationship with your supervisor and you want some help in repairing it. This is what a facilitated conversation would be.

Immediate conversation is perhaps that you don't really care to mend the relationship, but you have six months left in your program and you just want to get through as well as you can. And really we just need to identify some clear steps on how to move forward with your supervisor. And we do that together as a group. So it feels safe and it feels like there's somebody there to guide the conversation. We also offer coaching so we can help people practice some of those skills. Like what is it like to have a really hard conversation with somebody? What is it like to ask for your needs to be met by your supervisor?

What is it like to ask them to meet more often? Whatever it might be, but also working with faculty and really understanding what are those best practices and those policies that we have listed because some of the language that's used are is language that people just might not understand. Being a supportive supervisor, what does that mean? It can mean many different things for different people. If you are a social work supervisor versus an engineering supervisor, your definition of that word might look very different. So we can work with faculty on understanding what does that mean?

And how do we actually express it to students, And of course for grad students as well. If you want help unpacking what those best practices actually look like so you can implement them into your relationship, we also offer case management. This is what Lauren is here for. In situations where things are perhaps very complicated, we have lots of individuals, services, stakeholders involved. We offer case management just so things can stay organized and sure follow up and making sure that whatever it is that you're presenting with, if there's lots of people involved, if there is.

Follow through in some capacity and we can reach some level of a conclusion.

So some examples for There's many things you could come to CGMS for. These are just examples. If it doesn't fall into these four examples, it's OK. We encourage you to come to us anyways, and if perhaps we're not the people to help, we will help you find the people who can help. First two examples are about grad students. So perhaps you are coming to us because the supervisor has been, well, you feel like they've been bullying you, they've been perhaps like quite aggressive and you want to make a formal complaint.

We actually don't receive formal complaints, but we can help you find the people who do receive those complaints. And what does that process actually look like? If you have concerns about your supervisor not being available, let's say you sent them your revisions. Four months has gone by. You're wondering where's my supervisor. They've not answered me and I don't know how to reach out. I don't know how to tell them that I need their help. I'm trying to graduate on time, but I can't get a hold of them. What do I do? How do I ask for that if you are a faculty member or or if there is a faculty member?

Here I'm not sure if they express any concern perhaps about a students progress and they think maybe it has something to do with Wellness, perhaps their mental health. There is something going on. Many people don't know how to initiate that conversation, so we can assist with that as well. Or if somebody is a grad chair, if they're seeking any kind of support in addressing a concern that's raised by a student about their supervisor. So can we help them help somebody else? That's also where the coaching comes in.

What does Oops, sorry, I'm looking at the wrong slide. So what are our workshops look like? They look like many different things. If you want to request a workshop, we will tailor it to your needs. This is just an example of one of our workshops called Having Difficult Conversations. So these are some of the things that we will talk about. And again, we separate the student groups from the faculty groups, so it can hopefully feel a little bit safer and more comfortable. But we'll talk about things like why we don't have difficult conversations, what are the barriers to doing that. But we also want to make a case in terms of why you should be having those.

Conversations, especially with people like your supervisor, we don't want to just talk about, you know, the process associated with these things and why they're difficult, but we also want to give you some skills and some tools that you can take away. So for instance, in our Difficult conversation workshop, we do go over 5 steps that you can implement into your practice when you want to have a difficult conversation with somebody. And we don't have any dates just yet for our upcoming workshops, but we will be offering all these workshops.

In the fall, so we're going to be having a Having Difficult Conversations workshop and an Understanding Conflict workshops. So we offer standing workshops. But if you want to request one for your department, or if you are a part of some sort of graduate student group and you would like us to come and present to you, we can absolutely do that. You can just send us an e-mail and you can visit our website to see those updates. There will also be an update sent through the SGS newsletter, so you'll get a notification for when the dates are actually available and if you do request a workshop.

We'll take a moment to meet and we'll talk about what your needs are, what are you looking for, what's the group that you have looking for as well And we can tailor it a little bit to those needs so we can hopefully be as helpful as possible.

I'm going to very briefly identify some other resources on campus. Susanna has already talked about Accessibility Services, which is a really fantastic resource. There's also the Center for Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment. Our Community Safety Office, Health and Wellness was just Sean and academic success. I have a question slide, but we're doing questions later and this is our contact information, so you can call us if you'd like to e-mail us. You can do that as well. The only people who read.

Our inbox is myself and Lauren, and again we are confidential service. We're not going to go calling or emailing your supervisor if you tell us their name or if you tell us there's something going on. We keep it within the service itself and you can also go to our website to find some more information if that would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Aziza. That was great and very useful. And I just want to emphasize, if you are coming into a research based program, that supervisory relationship is the most important relationship you've got pretty much until you've done your degree. So find the resources, take the time to build a proper foundation for that relationship and CGMS can help with that.

Yeah.

Now turning to Sean, who's going to discuss information on health and Wellness. So when things haven't quite gone according to plan or if you want help managing things so they stay on track, health and Wellness can assist. Sean, thanks so much. Over to you.

Thank you. OK. So I am Sean Martin. I'm a social worker by training and one of the counselors here at Health and Wellness.

I want to just start by saying the information I'm providing is really current as of summer 2023. I find that our program is constantly changing, evolving, growing to meet the demands and the needs of the students. So.

I just want to make sure that I'm clear. This is what's going on for us right now.

So health and Wellness is your primary source for medical and mental health care on campus, and we offer a number of different services as.

Identified here.

Our.

Office is used to be located at Koflach Student Center, which is what you see here on the screen, but we've actually moved. There's some renovations happening at Kofler. It's the building that's at the corner of College and Saint George, the building that has the bookstore in it. If you, if you're aware of our our big bookstore on campus, Koffler Center is where we usually live. Our space is being renovated. So for the time being we are located.

At 700 Bay St. in Toronto, this is sort of a Girard and Bay at the corner of Girard and Bay, and we occupy the 12th and 14th floors of that building. So on the 12th floor, that's where all of our mental health and counseling services are located.

And on the 14th floor, that's the primary care clinic and the sort of the general reception area. This is where you check in to see a doctor or a nurse or even a counselor.

We're open Monday to Friday and during the summer hours we're open from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM. In the fall we'll be open until 5:00, but from July and August, I guess till Labor Day weekend, we are on summer hours we we end a little bit earlier.

So we have a mix of online and in person appointments both for our medical side and for our counseling side and it really depends on I guess one the.

Type of service that you need to have from the doctor.

Or your your wish. Many students prefer to have remote or online counseling appointments still, and that's available to you. But also many students like to have in person appointments, So it's really a hybrid model that we're going with right now.

It's important for you to know that all of our services are covered by OHIP.

Um.

And we don't have everyone's able to access their service. So it's available to undergrad and graduate students, but we're not available to postdoctoral students.

So you don't have to pay for our services, no out of pocket payments. We don't go to your private insurance, even if you're a TA.

There are some counseling services that are available to you as a TA that you might talk to your your you might seek in the community like private therapy.

And that's something you would talk to with your counselor about or one of our navigation counselors?

If if that is needed, but for the most part, we provide brief short term counseling services here at Health and Wellness that most of our students take advantage of.

There's also a service called My SSB that also provides counseling service and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a little while.

So how to access our service? Well, the main way to access our service is by calling the The main Line 416-978-8030.

That's the first step. It's the it's the front door and when you dial 5.

You're linked to the mental health department, and when you dial 2, you're linked to the medical side of of things. And this of course, would be explained to you in the greeting or welcome message when you call the number.

We do have a registration process, but it's paperless and it's much easier than it's ever been in the past.

We have.

I guess an app or or an online tool that we send to you, you complete this registration form, send it back to us and and that's it.

You're registered with our service and after you register there are a lot of, um, appointments that you can book.

Online at that point.

Now it's important for you HIP and international students UHIP coverage.

You know is activated from September 1st to August 31st, so for new international students, it's important to know that if you're arriving.

Early anytime after August 10th.

There there is free bridging, so you can start using the service at that point.

If you arrive before August 10th, you may want to contact the Center for International Experience because you have the you hip office sort of has a small fee that they charge for using the service early. So you can talk about early uhip coverage and the fee for that by contacting you hip.information@utoronto.ca by by emailing them or going to their website.

A lot of this information can be found on our website.

And I appreciate Rory putting those links into the chat.

OK. Yeah. So I've seen in my clinical practice that many students do prefer in person appointments with me. So we offer those. But like Suzanne, I'm on location at the School of Graduate Studies. I'm actually not located at 700 Bay. We have a model of care here at UFT for our counseling services that have us on location at various spots across.

The campus and I'm located at the School of Graduate Studies. I'm the graduate student counselor, so my office is here at 63 Saint George. I'm in the same building as Suzanne.

On the accessibility counselor, and this is.

You know, an attempt to make our service more accessible to students. When you come to see me, you're not entering a medical clinic. It's it's easier access, It's closer to campus and closer to the students who might need the service. So similarly we have on location counselors.

And other student life staff at Architecture at Dentistry.

At engineering First Nations house.

In in Life Science at Innis College New College Nursing, where we're spread across the campus.

At different locations.

To provide the service.

In a more accessible way.

And that's what our counseling services, as far as our medical services, you still have to show up at 700 Bay, and we're gonna be there for several years. It's gonna be a while before renovations are complete.

In the Koffler building, so you can trust that that's where you can find us.

For the foreseeable future.

Now I think it's important to know that the model of care we offer is called a stepped care model, which means you decide the level of intervention or or service you need from us. And I guess that depends a lot on the acuity of the problem that you're presenting with or your you're wanting to solve. So for lower acuity you might just need some self-guided support.

Maybe.

Information Something written or referral to books or resources that might be helpful.

And other students may need to connect with a peer so they can talk through a dilemma that they're having. They they don't necessarily feel the problem rises to the level of needing to speak to a professional counselor.

But if they were able to speak to another graduate student, that might be navigating a similar dilemma.

That would satisfy their need. We have a whole team of peer support counselors available to students and you know those two steps or those two, that two level of care is what they need and.

They're they're good after that for folks who have a more.

Complicated issues or wanting to work through something and more with more support.

They might make an appointment with an individual counselor to talk through a problem or a dilemma that they're having. It could be with a roommate. It could be a medical issue that's coming up or a mental health issue. It could be anxiety over academic progress.

Umm.

We offer individual counseling and all of our counseling is short term. We don't do long term ongoing counseling.

But we do have.

Different levels of short term counseling, so I'll I'll describe three different kinds.

1st we have what's called on.

One at a time or sane day counseling. So you wake up, you're experiencing A dilemma. You can show up and have an appointment with us with very little wait time. You can have an appointment, for example, on the same day.

On our schedule we have open appointments.

With a counselor.

Every day. That allows for students to have appointments very quickly. If you need a same day appointment, chances are you'll be able to get that no problem.

Most students decide, well, I need to see a council. I want it to be soon, but I'm busy today, so I'll schedule it for tomorrow. That's a very common thing. So definitely within the week there will be open spots for you to have an appointment at a time that's probably more convenient for you. So it's important to know we call those one at a time appointments. You come when you need to talk to somebody, talk through an issue when you need that issue resolved.

This step care model, the way we've set things up, allows for that kind of access.

There are other folks who may not know what the dilemma is, and so they need more of a in-depth assessment.

And so in that case.

You might have an appointment with a nurse or a doctor and do what's called a a a mental health assessment intake, and that's a bit of a longer process. And you know, only doctors are allowed to diagnose things. So if if it's a.

An issue that you want, you want to know, do I have clinical levels of anxiety or is this habit that I've formed?

Does that qualify as obsessive compulsive behavior? Those kinds of conversations would happen with a medical doctor and there's an opportunity for you to either resolve the issue with the doctor or maybe more assessment is required. They may refer you on to a specialist. So here on our team we have.

Not only medical doctors that can handle your physical health and do these kinds of mental health screening.

Appointments. But we have psychiatrists, a team of psychiatrists that are available to you. So if you ever needed more intensive care, a different step on our step care model, right the more intensive, more acute care of mental health support, you wouldn't have to wait long. Because we have our own psychiatrists you have access to here, that we're much faster access than you might find in the city of Toronto in general.

So.

Finally, we have a level of support that's again just more.

Tailored to accessing information through our groups.

We run a number of workshops and groups at Health and Wellness that provide information.

On a number of.

Issues. I'm trying to find the slide that speaks to this. Maybe I won't be able to see it until I go over here.

Ohh, here we go.

OK.

OK, finally. OK.

These are a number a list of our workshops that we're offering. Currently the Coping Skills and the Be Well workshops are offered during the summer time.

The breathe well and the sleep well, along with the four coping skills, a healthy behavior, balanced living, managing emotions and balanced thinking.

These workshops are designed to support students who are experiencing, you know, low grade sort of mood or depression issues, as well as anxiety, one of the most common dilemmas that students experience.

On campus.

And our goal is to provide you with concrete, helpful strategies to manage these dilemmas.

And improve your overall functioning while you're here.

Breathe Well and Sleep Well are two sort of workshops that work together to teach you mindfulness skills to improve the quality of your your sleep. Overall, two things that we we know for sure impact learning and your ability to function well as a student. The other workshops, especially the.

Sort of field based workshops like Reef support exam anxiety. These will be offered in the fall.

And have been offered in the past a number of years well attended by students. All of our workshops have been offered virtually lately, but we're trying to to see if people are willing to come back to in person workshops, and so we'll be offering some of them in person, but most of them are still offered virtually.

I'm conscious of the time, so I'm going to just highlight two more things and then I'll hand it back over to Rory.

Number one.

I want to make sure you're aware of the Maya SSP program.

My student support program.

Which is a free service.

Um, I don't seem to be able to find the slide on that.

So I'll go to this and I'll just describe it. I think Rory may have put the my SP link into the chat, but I want to describe what it is. It's a mental health support program and it's free to all University of Toronto students. But what's unique about this one is it's it's a you.

It's a free, confidential real time support that is accessible 24 hours seven days a week and it's accessible in multiple languages. You can download the My SP app to your phone and this could be an easy way of accessing this service. There are 35 different languages in real time and 146 by appointment.

It's important for you to know that the the service we offer at Health and Wellness.

Is an Ontario based service, so you have to be here in province to to speak to one of our doctors or see one of our counselors. But with my SP this is a counseling service that you can access no matter where you are in Canada or even in the world.

And so it's important for you to know about and to be familiar with. Check it out at.

My student support.ca.

And I hope that that's in the chat somewhere. If not, I can certainly put it in for you.

And so I'm going to pause here and.

I guess what's on the screen right now are a couple of other supports that are available to you as well. Good to Talk is another support that's available to students.

University students and their counselors are going to be very familiar with dilemmas that might be facing university students, and these are some other resources that might be of interest to you as well.

I too have a question slide. Maybe some of the.

Students will have questions for me as well.

Let's let's let's keep that question slide up and we'll piggyback on it. Sean Rossman reinvented the. I'll invite Suzanne and Aziza and Lauren to switch on their cameras and microphones and rejoin us.

And we have a question from Vincenzo about health insurance, which if people don't mind, I will answer if that's all right. So Vincenzo is asking whether he needs to do something special to get his insurance activated, and will it cover him for the four years of his program? I'm going to say that the answer is.

Not you don't have to do too much, do you do have to. There is an online registration process for you hit that you will get instructions for as you arrive.

But if you haven't gone through the online registration process and you sprain your ankle on the 2nd of September, you are still covered by you have. Even if you haven't had a chance to register and pay yet, it's best to do it as soon as possible so that our you hip office doesn't have to go to the insurance provider and make the case that you're covered As soon as you get here. Try to make your arrangements for you, but you will be covered from the moment the program starts.

But I do want to emphasize that when it comes to health, all students at the University of Toronto are covered by more than one health insurance plan. And I think Canadian students on this webinar are going to be very bored but by what I say next. But for international students, it's really quite important to to hear this.

Health insurance in Canada is provided by the provincial governments, and what's provided by provincial governments for health insurance is relatively basic.

So for instance, when I broke my ankle, I was qualified to go pay for a trip to the emergency room. They paid for a plaster cast, but nothing fancy like a fiberglass cast. It wouldn't cover physiotherapy.

So all Canadian students at UFT are covered by their provincial health insurance for the basics.

International students buy into a separate program called the University Health Insurance Plan, where you hit which Vincenzo was asking about, and that provides the same basic level of coverage for the international students.

But what if a student needs prescription medications? Or what if a student needs to go to the dentist, or need some kind of physio, or need some kind of vision care that's not covered under oath? Or you have?

So the Graduate Student Union enrolls all graduate students in two supplementary health plans, 1 foot one for health and one for dental. Those are part of your campus fees that you will be paying as as your fees for being a student, and they provide at least partial coverage for those things that aren't covered by OHIP or you.

Now, if you're coming in with coverage from a spouse, from a parent, from some other member of your family, or your own insurance, that covers off all the costs that would be covered by the GSU plans. There's a 30 day opt out period in September where you have the opportunity to say no, I've got coverage I don't want to pay twice. They'll assess your claim and may refund the costs of that plan.

But it was a great question. Yes, you will be covered as soon as your program starts. You'll be paying into your you hit every year until you're done your program and it will cover your basic.

That was a longer answer than I expected. I was hoping it would give the students a chance to type more questions. So we'd still have more than 20 participants here, and I'm sure they must have questions.

Uh-huh.

Which we may or may not know the answer to. So Donnie is asking the very good question. If she's coming from out of province with provincial health insurance from another Canadian province, does she have to make any changes to her health insurance to make sure she has access?

Does anyone here know the answer to that question?

I'm seeing some blank looks. I'm going to suggest that it probably will have some variation from province to province. You may need to notify your provincial health insurance provider that you are going to be spending time out of province. So to get the to get the proper answer on that, rather than asking the university, I'd strongly recommend contacting your provincial health insurance provider.

OK.

We do have a question.

About a student who's been going through some very difficult times and is concerned about access to housing, I'm going to ask. I'm not going to approve this question. I think it's something you might rather we keep confidential, so I'm just going to put my e-mail address in the chat for this student to send me an e-mail so I can put you in touch with the appropriate people. Please don't take this as trying to avoid your question or not wanting to answer it. I do want to help, I just don't necessarily want to share the details.

About this with everyone else on the webinar. OK, so if someone else could moderate the questions while I focus on my keyboard to make sure I'm getting the address typed in correctly, that would be awesome.

OK, back to the questions.

I'm sure there must be more question.

So.

Did anyone?

Did anyone not contact? Did anyone not manage to cover something in their presentation that they'd like to cover while we give this to students a chance to to put questions into the chat?

Um, I'm inspired by Sean. I didn't really mention the ways we can meet with folks, but we can do it virtually or in person. We're located at 65 and 63 Saint George.

A little bit of a space issue, so we're kind of between buildings, but it can be done virtually or over telephone if you prefer telephone. But seeing each other's faces is nice, but we can also meet in person and we do have confidential spaces where we can close doors, so.

Great. Thank you for that. Just got a reminder about the importance of confidentiality.

Any other questions Show ohh here we go. So Grace is asking if she applied to register with accessibility services. When can students expect to hear back?

Suzanne can offer us.

Think so. That's all right.

Sorry, was I muted there? Thanks. Thanks, Sir.

I'm having a bit of a tech challenge today apparently.

No.

With the participants, the students can't see from this as the interface for presenters is really quite complicated and a little counterintuitive. So we we're going to have more incidents like that, it's going to be fine.

Thanks for your Grace. Sorry. It really depends on when you've registered. September is a very, very busy time and I know last year there there was quite a wait because we were also a little bit short staffed at that time. Now that's no longer an issue, but that is the reason why we do encourage students to register early. I think right now the date is July 14th for early registration, but I would say.

And if you've registered now, it should be, I would anticipate within a week you would hear back. If you haven't you could follow up, but I think they are getting through things fairly quickly At the moment I am seeing a lot of students for intake. So those are being booked. But yeah, just encourage you to do that sooner rather than later.

I should also mention, sorry, just to jump in. Even if you register now, say you're going on vacation or something and you're not available for the next couple of weeks, you can still book something for a little bit later. But it's just good to get registered now. Make sure you have the paperwork that you need and just get something on the books so that when you are back from vacation.

You're not having to go to the end of the queue, it's already in place for you.

That's great. I'd also like to remind all students that you may have come here wanting to hear about health and Wellness and thinking about accessibility doesn't apply to you because you don't have an accessibility issue. A lot of the students who go to accessibility services are dealing with a short term disability, whether it's physical, like a broken bone or mental, as in they're going through some kind of mental health difficulty that we're able to resolve but need short term accommodations for. So Please remember this.

As you look forward to your programs, fingers crossed if you don't need accessibility now, hopefully you won't need it.

But many, many students do, at some point in their program have come across a limited time accessibility issue.

That's a great point Rory. And just to add to that, it's just a reminder for students that once you register with us and we put in accommodations, there is room for for movement there. So they are fluid. So over time if your health changes, your experiencing different impacts and you feel like your accommodations are no longer suitable or you may need something else to help support you, we would just ask that you book an appointment with us so that we can discuss.

That review any documentation that may be appropriate to help support you know your your presentation. And we can always modify accommodations and certainly for graduate students the types of accommodations may change throughout the course of your program. So for example, many students will start off in their first year or two with a lot of course based work and those accommodations may look very different from a student.

Doing their dissertation or preparing for their comprehensive exam or their oral defense. And so as you can imagine, the accommodations may change over time to suit the time in your program.

We also find that most students who have an accessibility issue coming in are very good at registering with accessibility and making plans, but if an issue arises that you haven't planned for and this induces or incurs additional cost.

There's also an accessibility grant offered through graduate awards and financial aid at the School of Graduate Studies.

I'm not an expert from the awards office so I'm not gonna go into too much detail, but I am going to put a link in the chat just in case that's to you.

For students that have accessibility related needs, For example, sometimes students will need access to counseling or for example, an academic coach, or they may need some kind of adaptive equipment. If it's an adaptive equipment piece, we would likely connect you with our adaptive technologist for an assessment, but for other things like the the coaching or counseling.

Or other kind of service. There are funding opportunities as well. So we can look at funding through OSAP. There is the bursary for students with disabilities. There are also other grants that we can access through our office and that really is a little bit dependent on each student's particular situation. So we'll go through a series of questions just to determine what kind of insurance you may have and what.

Funding you may be eligible for.

One thing that all three offices today have in common is it gets quite difficult to give blanket answers because so much does depend on the conditions of the individual student, but also on the plus side that they work so hard to meet the individual conditions of every student who comes to.

Alright, so I'm not. I have nothing new has shown up in the questions for the past five minutes, but that doesn't mean that someone is out there frantically typing. If you are frantically typing, hit enter with the incomplete question so we'll know that you're asking something. And while I give you a chance to do that, I really do want to take time to oh, we have a question coming.

Wonderful.

OK.

So Suzanne, I'm going to delegate a question to you, if I may.

Hmm.

We have a student asking for the link to the form for registering with accessibility services. Could you please provide that?

Yeah, I'm going to.

Just take a look at my slides.

And while you do that, I'm going to answer the question that Magdaleno was working on, if that's alright. Great question, Magdalena. She's asking is there a difference between the healthcare offered to Canadian permanent residents and citizens, or is everyone altogether under one group?

The answer is that Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

And speaking, have exactly the same healthcare access in across Canada.

And international students through your head.

Have an insurance plan that covers almost 100% identically all the costs that the Ontario Health Insurance Plan would cover, so there is effectively no difference in coverage.

For citizens and permanent residents who are grouped together in one group.

And international students who pay separately but whose coverage has specifically been designed to be identical.

And all students within the GSUS 2 plans have identical coverage through that plan.

If you are teaching assistant and therefore a member of Occupy the Canadian Union of Public Employees, you should have addition if you if your contract is large enough, to an additional healthcare spending account which gives you more coverage than the others that we've been describing so far. And finally, a significant number of students bring insurance with them whether it's because of spouse has an employer's plan that they're also enrolled in, maybe they still have access to their parents plan for a few years so.

Ohh, hitting you hit equal and everyone covered under OHIP is equal to everyone covered under OHIP.

The supplementary insurance from GSU, everyone within their is equal, and then whatever add-ons you may have, you might provide better, more comprehensive coverage or some things that aren't covered by those other.

Think that answers the question, at least I hope.

I I just want to add something.

Everyone, undergrad and graduate students have additional coverage through their student union when when Rory says GSU is the graduate student union. So you want to check out that website because you you have additional coverage through the graduate student union and that includes $750 for counseling services in the community, right? It's private. You could go to I I could refer you to a private therapist in the community and you can use up that benefit.

Um, to have private counseling, if that's what you'd like. I kept mentioning that the services we offer at UFT are brief. They're not long term services, so many students need to opt for private counseling.

You know, and this is one of the ways they pay for it and the other is other ways that Rory mentions like under your parents plan or your partner's plan, that kind of thing.

So I'm going to share a link in the chat here. That is the link to the GSU health and dental plans. The information is really thorough, but set aside a good half hour to read through it because it's pretty detailed and all self disclosure. When I was writing my thesis I went through some real anxiety issues.

And I had different options. I could access a psychologist using my health benefits through the GSU plan, and in the end I actually chose to get help from a psychiatrist, which I accessed through Ohio.

A few months later, I'd been given some some ways to handle anxiety and was able to move on. But I had options, and it's important to know that there's more than one way to approach a given problem.

Now the question that is very specifically for SO.

Yes, it's we're very specifically for Aziza, if that's all right. Daniella wants to know and she's using the phrase that I think needs to to to to check very closely Do the mentoring services also apply to students working with faculty that are not their supervisors in research positions or TA position.

That's.

I think you might want to take a second as easy to unpack the phrase mentoring services.

Yeah.

If if if what you mean by mentoring services is um.

Having a consultation, talking about what's going on, doing some skill building, doing some coaching as well around conflict resolution, you can absolutely come. We're not so rigid of a service where if it's not specifically the supervisor that you're working with, we can absolutely step in. And if we feel like we're no longer the appropriate service, we'll hopefully find another resource for you. So I'll give you an example. We've gotten a few students who come to us and they actually have.

Wonderful relationships with their supervisors and which is like a massive relief, but it's people in their lab that they don't have a good relationship with. They have like a couple of peers in their lab. Something's going wrong, whatever it might be, but it's still kind of sort of falls under that umbrella as a grad student. So it's easy to get really caught up in the nuances of the service. But in a case like that, I would say just come to us. We can figure out what's going on. If we feel like it's maybe again, another service that would be more appropriate.

We can send you that way, but it kind of still falls under this category of a supervisor relationship as a grad student. Just a little bit different. But you still connect with that person a pretty similar way, and there's also bound to be some kind of challenges that come up in that relationship as well.

So we have a question from Carlo that I'm going to approve, but Carla, you're not going to get a straight up answer from us because Carlo is asking where he can get a link to dental and medical services as you would T students.

The answer is that we we're not able to recommend external providers like that. You may get a list from the from insurance about which practices are directly dialed into their insurance networks.

If you're a UT student, you have access to the Health and Wellness Center here on support on whichever campus you're registered on, which provides primary care appointments or the family doctor if you don't have a family doctor in Toronto.

Um, and.

Someone has been consistently calling me for the last.

This is their 17th phone call that I'm trying to decline, so if I could hand over a question to.

Sophia, who wants to know about mental health disability disclosure to supervisors. Aziza, can I leave that with you?

Now in the chat.

OK, so it's how slash one do you disclose the mental health disability to your supervisor? My concern is kind of.

Kind of thought if I don't do properly, it won't be taken seriously. Or is this a question it can get help with through student accessibility? I would actually welcome Suzanne to answer this with me. When it comes to disclosing a mental health disability, as far as I understand, you don't actually have to disclose those details to your supervisor. This is one of those. It depends. Kind of situations like it really depends on your level of comfort.

Depends on the relationship that we have with your supervisor. But there is no expectation that you actually communicate the details of any kind of health concern to your supervisor. If they ask you the details, you are absolutely allowed to decline. You don't owe anybody that information. Actually, if you do go to accessibility and you get accommodations, those accommodations will be communicated to your supervisor. But again, it's done in a way where like Suzanne was saying like even accessibility isn't getting all these.

Um, you know, explicit details about a diagnosis. So that information like medical paperwork is not being provided. It's just the accommodation itself. It's just how do you best support this students and then no information about what the actual student is dealing with. So it's the answer is, again, sort of, it depends. It's up to you. But you absolutely are not expected to share that information with anybody. It depends on the relationship. But Susanna?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Welcome to a different answer. Or just, you know, maybe more information. But that's what I know that you just you don't have to. It's totally up to you.

18.

Absolutely. So in terms of documentation, we do need documentation to support the disability that students are registering with. In the case of a mental health disability, they do not need to consent to the actual diagnosis, but we would still need the functional impacts of the mental health diagnosis. In terms of disclosure to your supervisor or to your faculty, you are not required to disclose that information. My recommendation to you would be that.

We register with our office with accessibility services and if you need accommodations and we can talk together about putting together an accommodation plan and that is something that you would have.

Available to you, you would have an accommodation letter to share with your supervisor or your faculty member, and that would outline the academic accommodations that you require, but it would not include any kind of health or diagnostic information. And so if you find yourself in a situation where a supervisor or faculty is asking you for that information, you are not required to share that information and you can always refer them back to our office.

Um, you know, we're happy to.

That help with that communication. Sometimes we do set meetings where we have the opportunity to sit down together with faculty and the student to talk about the accommodations and how we might support them to be in place. And other times it may be the student would prefer not to be involved in that conversation and it may be one of our advisors just reaching out to faculty or supervisors to talk about. Again, not the details of your health condition, but.

How to implement the accommodations and how to help them?

Understand what the accommodations are, what they look like, and how they can be used. So some students do.

You know they do disclose personal health information whether it's a mental health diagnosis or other diagnosis and that's really your prerogative. But you are certainly not required to and and a lot of students are not comfortable to do that because for variety of reasons. But just wanted to be clear that that that is not a requirement and and I would encourage you to you know connect with our office.

And having been on the teaching side of this, I can say that accessibility staff are really good about protecting the privacy of students if if you don't want the exact nature of the disability, disclose.

That teacher, that supervisor, they're not gonna hear it. I I can really strongly promise you that.

We have 10 minutes left and the system does shut down automatically at 4:00 o'clock, so we've got at least two questions to get through, both of them very, very good. One of which I am going to punt to the other three presenters because Carla would like to know about getting updates on activities for health and Wellness at UFT. And can students sign up to receive e-mail alerts from your programs or offices? I'm going to start with a general answer, then hand it out to the other three.

You should be start getting monthly SSE news, which does advertise a large number of events and activities and opportunities. So we will publicize the deadline to register with accessibility services. But we can't be all things to all people, so we encourage students to find and register for other newsletters. So I'll hand that off to the other three.

I'll jump in here. Students that are registered with our office do get regular emails. I think it's a a weekly e-mail that does go out and that will highlight important dates. It will highlight certain workshops or groups that are starting or are available or drop Inns and just any kind of relevant information. So that is one benefit to being registered with our office.

And I think Sean is Googling it the way I was Googling his earlier SO.

Have you got something to share with us?

Yes, I personally advertise in the e-news, the grad e-news. So I I know that grad e-news would have information about our workshops.

And um.

I think health and Wellness does.

Well, we have a number of different ways that people access information with us. Did you know we have this new Navi bot?

Which helps you? Yeah. So it's it's. I'm going to try to find the slide.

It's a navigation system.

That helps you understand all the services.

That.

I've just.

It helps you find your way through I guess a mental health services offered at Health and Wellness. So this might be a a really helpful way to to figure out what's going on. I think our website is very up to date. I know that all the workshops we offer are are easily accessible through the programs link on our work on our web page and that gets updated regularly so you know what's happening in the summer.

You'll know what's happening in the fall. All the workshops are listed there. You register through CLM X, which is another place that you could see the different dates and times for the different workshops we offer. CLN X is a really important resource to be aware of. It's how you register for a lot of things across campus.

I would trust our website and I would visit it often. And um.

Click on the information you're looking for and you'll find updates there. Now, we don't have the fall schedule up yet, so come back and take a look in the fall. We still have the summer schedule.

Sure.

I'm just going to share my screen for a second because I went looking for a health and Wellness newsletter. Turns out there is a health and Wellness newsletter run by the Health Promotion Office, so feel free to click on that link to see what they got and to subscribe.

But when you do click on that link, you'll be taken to a screen that I want to share with you really briefly because.

Ohh, I have to choose which tab I I have not yet.

A shared screen on this platform, so this could go terribly wrong.

No, it's actually gone exactly as we wanted it to. This is the the page where you would subscribe to the Health and Wellness newsletter. But on the side over here, as with Arnold, lot of UFT websites is the tab for Navy. We're making heavy use of this to put it out here.

And here's the tab that just opened up that you couldn't see because it only shows one tab at a time. This is where you start typing your questions if you have questions about mental health and accessing services. So it is there for you on the on the many UT pages 24/7, and I wanted to make sure that you were aware of that.

OK. So one last question from Vincenzo who has recognized that in order to be covered for you have you do need to pay your you hit fees through Acorn as part of your registration. And his concern is that it's not possible to pay fees before arrival in Canada because you need to open a bank account.

Great question, but it requires 2 answers. One to say don't worry, as I said before, yes it's important to pay your fees as soon as possible on arrival.

But if you land here on September 1st and twist your ankle at the airport?

You will be covered by you. You can get that ankle scene too and then go pay the fees once you've got a cast on your ankle.

The other thing is it is possible, if you're concerned, to pay your fees before arrival in Canada. There are a couple of opportunities, so a couple of options with the Office of Student Accounts.

Has.

And I'm gonna put the link in the chat to how to make a fee payment from outside of Canada. So before you have.

A Canadian bank account you can still pay through a service called Convera or another service called Flywire, and I'm gonna put the links to both those services right now in the chat.

So if you if you want to be sleeping really well at night and know that your fees have been taken care of before you come to Canada, fees will be posted on Monday, July 17th on your Acorn account and once they've been posted, you have access here to two payment methods from outside Canada.

All right, we've had no new questions in the chat for for a bit, so we've only got 4 minutes left. So it really is important for me to say a big thank you to Sean. Suzanne and Aziza have so much knowledge about how they're different offices are able to help students troubleshoot in advance of problems arriving or to intervene when problems do arise. So thank you so much, not only for the work you do on a day-to-day basis, but also for coming in today and sharing this information with our incoming students.

We have one last question.

Uh, if we if we go to a health. So I'm gonna paraphrase slightly by adding two parts to this. So Magdalena wants to know if you go to Health and Wellness and see a counselor, is a record made? And two, can this record be shared with other professionals if the student asks for it to be shared?

It will not be shared if the student does not want to share, that I can guarantee.

Right.

So yes, there we do have an electronic file for students and that file is accessible by any healthcare provider at the clinic providing service to that student, right.

And the student has access to that file. They can certainly request for the notes from that file. And there's a process to do that, a form that you complete.

And you ask for those notes to be sent to whoever you'd like them sent to, like it usually is another healthcare professional.

And so there's a process to have those records disclosed to the other healthcare professional.

We never these are medical records. We never share them without your written consent. Everything you share with us is kept in the strictest of confidence. There is no paper. It's all in a medical record.

It has nothing to do with any system at UFT. No registrars office or any other department at UFT has access to these records. These are medical records kept in the strictest of confidence, and they're very private, so.

And not just security as well.

Right, it's it's um.

It's it's not even on our computer, our desktop computer. It's a remote access kind of thing.

Uh.

All right. We're going to be cut off in just 30 seconds at most. So I think that's all we have time for. We will be posting the recording on the page where you registered for these webinars. So one last time. Thanks so much, Sean, Aziza, Suzanne, Lauren, we really appreciate this and your recording will be posted live for posterity. So thank you so much, everyone. Take care.

My pleasure. Bye, bye.