My name is Kieron Portbury and I’m running to be your next QSU Welfare Officer! Student Welfare is at the heart of all the work Queen’s Students’ Union does – and I want to ensure it remains the number one priority both within the university and external to it. Below are some of the major issues I’d like to prioritise within the Welfare role as well as some detail as to why they’re so important – and I welcome all feedback and questions!

My hub for all campaign content is linktr.ee/kieronforwelfare.

You can find me on Instagram @kieronforwelfare, Twitter @kieronportbury, and Tiktok @kportbury.

Mental Health Investment

A lot of money has been poured into Student Mental Health at Queen’s and yet Mental Health remains a crisis among students as we adapt to a new environment in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and the aftereffects of a pandemic. I want to ensure that Queen’s are investing into initiatives and opportunities that genuinely make an impact on student wellbeing.

Queen’s is currently partnered with Inspire, an organisation which provides students in need with 4-6 counselling sessions free of charge. This is barely enough time to start opening up to a counsellor, let alone explore the root of an issue. Queen’s needs to further invest, whether in Inspire or with other organisations, to ensure that students are given access to fully-fledged, comprehensive counselling.

Long-term Mental Health services external to Queen’s continue to face extremely long waiting lists, with some waiting years for diagnoses or counselling. I intend to lobby the Belfast Trust and the Health Minister to increase the funding being put into Mental Health services – a difficult task with the lack of a functioning Executive as of right now, but one I believe is achievable.

Relationships and Sex Education

Northern Ireland remains the only part of the UK without comprehensive Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in schools. This has an effect on the ability of young adults to properly come to terms with concepts such as sexual orientation, dating, and sex. It is also a hugely contributing factor to the continued wave of violence against women and girls seen across the UK and Ireland.

I intend to continue the work I have started in my role this year to implement RSE workshops and events at Queen’s. Many of these are delivered by external organisations we have partnered with, ensuring their longevity past the term of a student office. I also intend to push for Queen’s to expand their work on areas of consent and harassment, ensuring that victims are believed and taken seriously if and when they choose to report an incident, and that they are offered comprehensive support. The Report and Support system as it exists currently is not favoured positively by the student body, and is in need of an overhaul to ensure it protects the wellbeing of students from the start.

Drug and Alcohol Harm Reduction

Drug and alcohol use are common among students, particularly in Northern Ireland, where alcohol consumption is often a regular part of student life. There remains, however, a lack of education, resources, and supports around the areas of harm caused by drugs and alcohol, how those harms can be mitigated, and how to respond to harms appropriately. Not only that, but Queen’s Student Policy on Alcohol and Drug Use is punitive and is not clear enough in offering support to students negatively affected by alcohol and drug use.

Drug and alcohol abuse are health issues, not criminal ones, and students should not face disciplinary action for a health problem. I want to fight for Queen’s to rewrite the policy, introduce harm reduction education work, and be more robust in the support provided to students affected by drug and alcohol abuse. Along the same lines, I want Queen’s Accommodation to remove all stipulations from the terms of occupancy relating to disciplinary action as a result of drug or alcohol use, and instead focus on providing health and wellbeing support.

This kind of policy change is possible and happens all the time in universities, and some, such as The University of Bristol, have adopted a central harm reduction policy not just at the Union but at an institution-wide level. Queen’s needs to follow their example and move towards doing the same, and I will fight for them to do so.

Persistent Cost of Living Support

The cost of living crisis is not going to disappear overnight, nor are students going to suddenly become more financially stable because of a one-off payment. I want to lobby Queen’s to provide persistent, long-term financial support for students in need, to work with local transport companies, to keep extra costs in Accommodation to a minimum, and to invest in initiatives that will provide financial security and stability for the student body. This means fighting against a further rise in Accommodation rent fees, urging Queen’s Accommodation to lower or remove laundry costs, working with groups such as Belfast Student Housing Co-Op, and fighting against ridiculous fees at Purpose Built Student Accommodation in whatever way possible.

Fighting for financial support at a university level is always difficult due to the continuing marketisation of education and the treatment of students as customers. Continued cost of living work will require campaigning and organisation on all levels both internally and externally, and will certainly remain a team-wide effort – one that I want to drive forward with the energy and passion of the student movement. Students deserve to have more than their most basic needs met.

Other Key Issues

• Students have recently been pushing for the provision of the abortion pill within our free reproductive health clinic. While it is a highly regulated medicine, I want to continue to advocate for its provision and the expansion of services we provide in the clinic.
• QSU and QUB have core interactions and relationships with the PSNI, yet students continue to be overpoliced and underserved by insitutions that are supposed to keep them safe. I want to work to detangle and detach QSU from policing, and in the long-term, have Queen's distance itself from the PSNI.
• The University Health Centre remains an inadequate service for students and I want to push QUB to provide a more extensive and robust healthcare service, particuarly for international students and those living away from home.
• And more! Welfare is a huge area of work - so get in touch with me on the pages mentioned above about the issues affecting you!

About Me

Years of experience in volunteer work as well as a year as a student officer have led me to be well equipped for fighting for change against institutional resistance. As a queer, disabled, and trans person I know all too well how difficult it can be to have to fight simply to be recognised as worthy of the most basic support. My passion for welfare work has come through in everything I've done, from my work leading a youth forum in East London to my dissertation on police abolition, and I want to continue to advocate for students to recieve the wellbeing support they so desperately deserve.

This year as the Equality & Diversity Officer I've worked on a number of key things, including:

• Leading on the development of an International Student Guarantor Scheme to provide better housing security to students from outside NI, with work on track for implementation by May 2023, and a continued push for the scheme to be open to all students.
• Pushing for the expansion of support available to student parents and carers, whether it be academic, financial, or pastoral. This includes re-opening QSU's Parents' and Carers' Support Fund in September 2022 and granting money to 18 successful applicants, and working with staff developing the new Assessment Support Framework on the inclusion of specific support for parents and carers.
• Leading a Pride Breakfast and student parade bloc for Belfast Pride 2022.
• Growing QSU's relationships with external organisations such as Common Youth and White Ribbon NI.
• Leading a rally outside Belfast City Hall to mark the 3rd anniversary of the decriminalisation of abortion in NI.
• Providing safeguarding kits with anti-spiking and personal safety materials for Freshers' events.
• Working with Belfast City Council on the development of their city-wide anti-spiking motion and the implementation of it once it passed.
• Acting as the student representative for NI for the co-design of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, a national strategy designed to tackle gendered violence in all forms.
• Facilitating conversations among students around clear, healthy sex and relationship boundaries, with art events and upcoming workshops delivered by external facilitators.
• Working with student reps and QUB Wellbeing on the continuation of the period products scheme, including responding to a government consultation to advocate for widespread inclusion in the scheme and greater funding for period products across Queen's campus.
• Reviewing the disability accessibility structures in place in the new One Elmwood facility and where improvements can be made, such as the lowering of a till in the shop, as well as continuing to advocate for cash to be taken in the building's facilities where possible.
• Collating, presenting, and continuing to act on student feedback around cost-of-living support and where Queen's, or external organisations such as Translink, can tangibly do more.

This March 6th - 9th, consider voting Kieron for Welfare - because students deserve better than the bare minimum.