How University Careers Services are Supporting Outreach During Covid-19

As part of the South Yorkshire OfS funded Uni Connect outreach programme, ‘HeppSY’, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University Careers Services work in partnership to offer advice and guidance to students who live in areas where progression to HE is least likely. 5 Higher Education Progression Advisers are employed as part of the HeppSY project to deliver this important work, targeting year 9 to 13 students least likely to access Higher Education, and much of that work involved face to face delivery. In response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, HeppSY have revamped their offer to schools and colleges, by putting the following in place:

·         launching an advice line for final year level 3 students and their parents / carers who need guidance to navigate their next steps

·        creating a chat function on our website where all students, parents and carers can ask qualified careers advisers questions

·         launching an extensive ‘Here to Help’ online offer, with at least 3 resources for each year group to access online

·         increasing our social media presence, aiming to engage with staff, parents and carers to pass on information to those who may have limited IT or internet access, but who may have internet access on their mobile phone.

In making a large part of our existing outreach offer available online, HeppSY is aiming to help as many students and their supporters as possible throughout this time, enabling them to still access information advice and guidance on the higher education and outreach opportunities available to them.

So far feedback about this offer has been tremendously positive, and we continue to work with the HeppSY data team to create short feedback forms to evaluate the effectiveness of the online resources and helpline.