Corpus Welfare

Note: This page is on the legacy JCR website and is no longer updated.

For up-to-date welfare information, check the new website.

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Your JCR Welfare Officers for 2020 are:

Harry Vincent: Welfare Officer

Patricia Trofin: Welfare Officer

Kit Edgecliffe-Johnson: Welfare Officer

You can also contact:

Eleanor Rist: LBGT+ Officer

Hero Bain: Gender Equalities Officer

Zachary Aw Zheng Quan: Ethnic Minorities Officer

Robin Denham: Disabled Students Officer

For Freshers' Week advice/help:

Niamh O'Brien: Vice President

Feel free to contact us at any time for anything, anonymously if you'd prefer!

There are also plenty of contacts on the welfare form, which can be found on the backs of all toilet doors and in shared spaces in college.

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Where to get help

As well as using the JCR Welfare Officers, help from College is always available. Feel free to contact any of the following, about anything and at any time:

For information on local health and welfare services, use the following link:

For national services and information, the JCR Welfare Officers and CUSU have each compiled the following lists of useful contact details:

JCR Welfare Officers

In the past we had 'Male' and 'Female' Welfare Officers. This system was recently changed, and now we have three welfare officers, and during voting we apply the rule 'It cannot be the case that all three elected welfare officers identify and present as the same gender'. This is a bit more of a mouthful, but essentially if you want to speak to someone who you know has had experience of the problems you may be facing, there should be someone you can talk to! The reasons for the change were partly political, but also to emphasise that men need not seek help from a male officer, nor women from a female welfare officer.

The Welfare Officers are there to make sure that you are happy, so please do email them or drop by their rooms at some point (they will provide a guideline document for use of their services, when are appropriate times to drop by etc). They also run weekly sessions, ParTEAs and miscellaneous events where you know you can't miss them!

Below is the list of current welfare officers, alongside other roles that might be broadly categorised 'Welfare' You can find out more information about each post and what these officers do by visiting their information pages. Feel free to contact any of these officers at any time!

Welfare Officers:

Liberation Officers:

Others:

The Chaplain

Andrew Bigg lives in D4, New Court, and is readily available to all members of the College at any time, with or without appointment. Students are welcome to call on him at his room, or find him around college, to talk to him about anything in a confidential, non--judgemental atmosphere, whether spiritual or not,.

Andrew has an open--door policy and is here for the whole College community, so it isn't necessary to be religious or have a big problem to arrange a chat.

The Chaplain can be contacted by:

The College Counsellor

Terry Forbes--Mitchell has years experience working therapeutically with young people, and is a member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy. She is not part of the University, so all communication with her remains completely confidential.

If you feel you would like to talk with someone who is completely independent of the College and the University please feel free to contact her. She will usually be able to arrange a convenient appointment within 48 hours.

The College Counsellor can be contacted by:

  • Email: [mailto: cambridgecounsellors@gmail.com cambridgecounsellors@gmail.com]
  • Phone: 07903 794317

When contacting the College Counsellor by phone, please leave a voicemail and you will be called back. You can also arrange an appointment by speaking to Wendy in the Tutorial Office, or you can email Terry directly to organise an appointment.

JCR Welfare services

General chats

Although they are not counsellors, the Welfare Officers are happy to have a chat at any time. They are also able to point you in the direction of someone who can help if they can't. The Liberation Officers (LGBT, ethnic minorities and gender equality) are also available to chat, if you feel more comfortable talking to them. You can contact the Welfare and Liberation Officers by email, mobile, or simply by popping to their rooms. For 2020, the welfare and Liberation officers are available between 9am and 9pm, and will try at other times of day. The porters are also available 24/7, and are the best people to contact in an emergency, especially if it is during the night.

Any communication between you and the Welfare Officers will be completely confidential, with the exception of extreme situations in which they consider yourself likely to cause harm to yourself or someone else (again, guidelines will be issued by the welfare body about their policy around confidentiality). Should you wish to remain anonymous during this communication, you can also get in touch with them by leaving a note in their pigeonholes.

ParTEAs!

The Welfare Officers will run an assortment of events such as study sessions, sporting and pet therapy and most importantly ParTEAs, a great staple of Corpus life involving large amounts of free snack food, healthy and unhealthy alike. Liberation also run a series of events, such as LGBTeas, film nights and craft sessions. The officers will advertise those events throughout the year.

Please feel free to come by at these times, when you know you can't miss them. There will be tea, coffee and biscuits (and almost certainly a lot of doughnuts)!

Useful information

The Welfare Officers have information and leaflets on a wide variety of topics (sexual health, drugs, etc) which can be passed on to you. Should you require any of this information, please contact the Welfare Officers via email or message them.

Sexual Health Supplies

Corpus JCR provides free Sexual Health Supplies:

  • Condoms (Large, Regular, Trim, Latex Free)
  • Pregnancy Tests
  • Femidoms (Vaginal condoms)
  • Dental Dams

Click here for more information.

JCR Mailing lists

LBGT

If you would like to subscribe to Corpus' own confidential LBGT students mailing list and hear about LBGT swaps, socials, news etc. please click here. Your name is optional and only the JCR LBGT Officer can see who has signed up.

There is also a closed Facebook group for Corpus LGBT. Just ask the LGBT officer to be added.

If you would like more information, please contact the JCR LBGT Officer.

International students

Corpus also has a confidential mailing list for international students about swaps, socials, news etc.

All international students (defined as those who live overseas--including Northern Ireland and islands comprising the UK) at Corpus are automatically subscribed to this, but if you would like to receive these emails please contact the JCR International Students Officer.