Homesickness for Support Staff
Resources for helping homesick students
A number of years ago, I attended a national tertiary chaplains' conference in Canberra. Rev Hugh McCafferty, a social worker, Anglican priest and chaplain to the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand brought with him a copy of the brochure he had written about surviving homesickness. He, the other chaplains and the student counsellors made it widely available around the university and he offered it to anyone who thought it might be useful. I took it back to Monash Gippsland in Churchill, Victoria, where I was chaplain at the time and adapted it to local conditions with the help of Mr David Abbott, Head of Student Services, who suggested the additions about culture shock. It's still being used there.
When I began as Uniting Church chaplain to the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, I didn't have time to consult with others, so I produced it with further slight adaptions as my brochure, but it proved very popular and is now an annual production involving the wider university. It is distributed to all the student residences, the international office, the postgraduate centre and various other key places around campus and also made available at O Week stalls. Funding to print it was provided by all residences, Counselling and Careers, the International Office, the UNE Postgraduate Association and all chaplaincies.
I offer it to other tertiary chaplains, student counselling services and other student support organisations, but if you use it, please make sure that you attribute it correctly. You can view or download either a rich text or pdf version of the document. The Word version is fully editable, but doesn't contain the graphics which you can see in the pdf document. In order to view the pdf version, you will need to have an Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer - this can be downloaded for free and is easy to install if you follow the instructions on the website.
If you have any problems or questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. I am quite happy to send different formats of the document to you if you can't cope with either of the above - I have it set up as a Publisher 2000 document and can easily send a text only version.