The Student Services Finance Committee approved the Wisconsin Union 2020 budget and passed their University Health Services 2020 budget recommendations Monday night.
The Wisconsin Union 2020 budget passed in a vote of 10-0-1, and SSFC’s UHS recommendations passed in a vote of 11-0.
The six recommendations were developed by SSFC for the UHS 2020 budget to express the committee’s official stance on the budget.
SSFC recommended UHS investigate the reason for their high staff turnover. The committee would like a full review to be conducted, resulting in an action plan by the end of fall 2019.
Another recommendation was that UHS hire ten mental healthcare providers in 2020. SSFC recommended at least one provider specialize in survivor resources, at least one be focused on students of color and at least one be LGBTQ+ focused.
SSFC also had recommendations for the task force created by the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. This task force was developed to determine how to best address mental health services at the University of Wisconsin. SSFC recommended that the force be representative of UW students and include a member of the Associated Students of Madison.
The recommendation also asked that the task force develop a long term action plan by the end of the fall 2019 semester.
SSFC also proposed that the task force expand services by acquiring more physical space for UHS, determine when students are most in need of services, create a mandatory mental health online program for incoming freshmen and training for faculty, implement more online and phone programs and recruit a project manager to run the mental health expansion.
SSFC Vice Chair Zaakir Abdul-Wahid stressed the importance of hiring a full time staffer to oversee this expansion.
“A lot of the mental health providers are overworked, so coordination for all of these moving pieces would be almost impossible to just tack on additionally to someone’s existing job description,” Abdul-Wahid said.
ASM already has two spots on the task force to ensure they stay updated on its progress.
The committee will present their recommendations to Chancellor Rebecca Blank at a meeting in March.
