Easter Holidays Welfare Meeting Minutes

Improving welfare visibility, support routes, and low-pressure events for Term 3.

Minutes by Odin

"Guys, maybe we should have written the agenda before the meeting." - Willow (2026)

Attendance

• [Secretary] Odin
• [Welfare] Erica
• [Welfare/Social] Willow
• [Gaming/Tech/Ex-Welfare] Raven
• [President] Tom F
• [President] Tom S
• [Welfare] Kevin

Agenda 1: Discord Permissions

• Specifically welfare.
• Tom F: "███████████████████████████████"
• Tom F: I am aware that welfare officers and tech officers are given admin permissions.
  • Tom F: With great power comes great responsibility.
  • Tom F: I am going to give Erica, Willow, and Kevin those permissions right now, but it comes with a warning.
  • Tom F: █████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ███, I have very low tolerance for chicanery. If you give me a reason to take it away, I will take it away from all of you.
  • Willow: Yes █████.
  • Erica: That's very clear.
  • Raven: Don't delete message logs where possible; a paper trail is a good idea as you may need to use them as justification with other exec for your actions.
  • Raven reminds welfare officers about permanent audit logs for when they are considering taking actions that would look like an abuse of power.

Agenda 2: Reachability

• Feedback form has 10 responses; statistically insignificant.
• Raven: Worth pushing feedback form again.
  • Tom F: Will do a reminder ping/email.
  • Raven and Tom S had a discussion re the last term's email. Don't want to fall into trap of "x amount of responses, so let's do nothing"; don't want a pseudo-minority making large decisions for the society.
  • Raven: Filter through feedback for [not actionable items]; be sensible about choosing what feedback to respond to.
  • Tom F: Reminder that this feedback is based upon things in the last cycle (Raven & Tom S) and are to be improved on.
  • Raven: Wants members to be involved more in the conversations we're having.
• Welfare events would go a long way in making sure people:
  • know who the welfare officers are
  • feel comfortable approaching them
• Tom F: People mentioned that people are not entirely aware who welfare officers are.
  • Tom F: Want to be able to find welfare officers on Discord; that's one thing.
  • Tom F: Uses sober exec as an example, i.e. pinged in #announcements: "you're ████ out of luck if you don't know who that person is in real life".
  • Raven: Struggle for last cycle and one before that is trying to frame events that are intended as welfare events without putting people off.
  • Raven: "Passive presence": a lot of people figured out I was exec after I wore my exec hoodie a lot of the time.
  • Willow: Sober exec T-shirts.
  • Tom F: I think lanyards are going to be better.
  • Willow: Bright pink merch for sober exec?
  • Tom F: Hear me out: big purple top hat.
  • Raven: People might be more comfortable sharing hoodies, to be honest.
  • Willow: Special announcement on Discord for welfare officers.
    • Announcement introducing ourselves / reintroducing welfare resources.
    • Raven mentions the passed poll on creating #meet-the-exec; will get on that ASAP. Include photos and real names etc., not just tags.
    • Tom F: Would be good to make a "meet the welfare officers" post during Term 1.

Anonymous Welfare Form

• Idea proposed about an anonymous welfare form running throughout the year.
• Willow: ████████ do an anonymous welfare form throughout the year, should we take inspiration from this?
  • ███ ███ ███████ █████.
  • Allows people to share any concerns privately without asking "████ ███ ████ █████████".
  • Add to the bottom of newsletters / emails etc.
  • Responses only accessible to welfare officers.
  • Raven: Maybe add optional contact details.

Welfare Resources

• Inspired by WUFS, Kildy last year, MAF this year.
• Raven: Wants to see, and is happy to help out with, when people reaching out to Tom S or Raven ended up asking surface-level questions and ended up being signposted.
  • If we were able to passively signpost, it would help bear the load.
• Willow: Suggests putting a page on the website with Report & Support links etc.

Publicity Post

• We could get publicity to do a post just for welfare.
• Raven: One from last year was made up into four portions, grouping by role and make welfare the fist slide of one of the portions.
• Raven: Put a post out at the start of Term 3 with new exec names.
• At the beginning of next year, do one entire big meet the exec post.
• Willow: Do a welfare post within the next couple weeks?
• Raven: Brief drive for welfare contact details on meet the exec.
  • Put the exec mailboxes on there, okay but could be better.
  • Would be useful for having Discords linked, but some people might not be comfortable with having their Discords public.

Agenda 3: Welfare Events

Welfare Walks

• Willow: Wants to do some walks.
  • Collab with DofE Society.
  • Possibly one to Kenilworth toward the end of T3.
  • Willow: Not saying we have to walk to Kenilworth.
  • First one before the end of Term 3 and a few in Term 1 (W1 and W2).
• Raven: Keep getting poked by ██████ █████ ███████ through ████████ services.
  • Events run by wellbeing services, e.g. run on Wednesday morning; potentially take inspo from or signpost to these events to promote the being-active part of welfare.

Tea++

• Thoughts on Tea++ during exams.
• Willow: Run on a Wednesday afternoon.
• Tom F: Illustrates this would clash with Wildcards.
  • Willow: It's Term 3; it doesn't matter. (Implying that scheduling would be easier with less events)
• Willow: When is the exam period?
• Raven mentions that DCS exam period ends W9 (but historically more like W7).
  • Willow: Maybe schedule Tea++ for right before exams, not after.
    • helps calm nerves etc
  • Instead, could do collective study sessions with calm music for wellbeing throughout exam season.

Study Skills with ADHDSoc

• Previously ran a session with ADHDSoc.
• Raven has slides for it.
• Tom F: Only about ten people turned up.
• Raven said it was advertised only on the day (only Discord announcement).
• Get academic people involved, for more substance/publicity.

Into the Void

• Willow: "Welfare screaming into the void" (name TBD).
• Willow: Tocil Woods or Westwood, essentially the middle of nowhere.
• Willow: Start screaming (if you're mad about something).
• Tom F: We may get community safety called on us.
• Tom F: Points out that Christina is planning a rage room event for Social, so it may serve in lieu.
  • Tom F: As Willow is Social and Welfare, you'll be able to manage both.
  • Willow asks if she's able to ██████ ██ ██████ ███████ ███.
  • Tom F: No, you have to ████ █████ the ███████ ██ ██████ ████████ and ████████.
• …
• Willow (to Raven): Do you want me to ████ █████ to ████ your ████.
• Raven: Discloses SU Easter break shutdown dates (closed from 1st to 8th Apr).
• Raven, Kevin, and Willow are still in Warwick over the break.
  • Tom F: Kevin, are you still here?
  • Kevin: I think I fell asleep earlier.

Dogs

• Erica: Need to look into the dogs.

• Pets As Therapy company name that Stats used for their event.

• Especially if they'd do it for free in exchange for donations.

• Physics do it every year.

• Raven: Cheese it via cross-posting.

• Adopting a society pet is brought up.

  • We can also just adopt a dog.
  • Tom F: Suggests that we should choose a plant over cats or dogs.
  • Willow: What about a snake plant.
    • Willow: Even better, a society snake.

• Are we done with welfare events?

• Willow: Kevin needs a better nickname.

• Kevin: heheheheh.

Sober Exec

Restart Rotating Sober Exec

• Restart rotating sober exec; coordinate with the Social Secretaries.
• Is there anything we could have improved on from last year?
• Raven: Timeline; there were a few times where it was finalised later than ideal.
  • Recognises this depends on moving parts of other exec.
  • Implementing a cut-off for events which require sober exec.
  • Willow suggests first event announcements.
  • Needs to be announced further in advance.
• Willow: Representation should be better as we have 11 femme-presenting exec.
• Jakub Publicitski joins meeting
• Jakub Publicitski: █████████████████████████ ██████████████████████████
• Jakub Publicitski leaves meeting
• Should be enough to have at least one AFAB person at each event.
• Raven: Need to do more work this year to ensure that women have someone to talk to.
• Raven: Also, is a computing society i.e. there may be guys who are not comfortable talking to AFAB people.
• Kevin: Well I'm here, so maybe don't VONC me?

Rotating Within Welfare at Non-Sober Events

• Should we rotate within ourselves for welfare at non-sober events, plus preferences (circles, pub crawls)?

• Willow: How are we going to split duties?

  • e.g. Tom S disliked circles because of the noise so did none, raven more tolerable so took responsiblitly.
  • Raven: To be clear, I disliked them too.
  • Raven: I have a sunflower lanyard for a reason.
  • Kevin: Wait, hang on, Raven, you're autistic?

• Raven: Suggests for circles and pub crawls, at least two welfare officers.

• Willow: Will have a POP! pass next year so volunteers for circles.

• Erica: I can sober all the pub crawls.

• Raven: Freshers pub crawl was very hectic; can be a lot to handle with all the events.

• Sober exec events: IKEA crawl.

• Exec discussed transport plans.

Training

• Tom F: I know very little about this.
• Constitution mandates Active Bystander training: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/conduct-and-resolution/support/forallstudents/abcourse/
• SU also requires a minimum of two core exec to do it, as well as all Welfare Officers.
• Willow: Do we have to sign up for it ourselves?
• Raven: Recommends getting it out the way as quickly as possible (ideally Term 3).
• Raven: Other bit which is constitutionally mandated is Report & Support training: https://reportandsupport.warwick.ac.uk/campaigns/report-and-support-ready
  • Bunch of video.
  • Lifehack is watch on 2x speed.
  • Ideally the entire exec do it for accreditation point this year.
• Raven: Exec welcome event: Term 3 Week 1: https://tickets.warwicksu.com/ents/event/28374/
• Raven: Really ████ platform called Evolve.
  • Other training is via Evolve;
  • Should get a login (by T3 W1) if you haven't already been part of an exec.
  • Needed for all core exec.
  • Have until end of summer before.
  • Tom F: Will wait until proper announcement before pinging all roles.
  • Tara joins
  • Everyone in unison: hello Tara.
  • Thomas asks Tara whether a ██████ from ███ ████████ has ████ ███ ███.

Closing Words

• Raven: Remember this is a society role; there are going to be some limits.
  • Do what you can.
  • Tom S and I as previous exec are more than happy to help you out.
  • Hopefully this year will go relatively smoothly.
• Raven: Welfare needs to also fare well.
• Erica: Bosh.

TODO

• Tom F: Send a reminder ping/email about the feedback form.
• Raven: Set up the #meet-the-exec welfare intro/update with photos and real names, not just tags.
• Create a welfare officer introduction / welfare resources announcement on Discord.
• Create a "meet the welfare officers" Instagram post during Term 1.
• Set up an anonymous welfare form to run throughout the year.
• Willow: Plan welfare walks, including a first walk before the end of Term 3 and more in Term 1.
• Welfare: Complete Active Bystander training.
• Welfare: Complete Report & Support training.
• Exec as a whole: Complete Evolve training once logins / access are available.
• Tom F: Ping all roles once the proper training announcement is out.