- Expectations of service
- Holistic advice and collaborating with other King's services
- Lateness and missed appointments
- Case management
- Student staff
- Complaints and feedback
- Be assisted at the earliest possible opportunity and be treated in a kind, courteous and nonjudgmental manner that is free from discrimination.
- Have a private interview or online space to discuss your situation.
- Have an independent observer, family member or friend at the interview if desired.
- Receive full and accurate information regarding your case.
- Be contacted as soon as is reasonably possible, if there has been a development with your case.
- Be informed about further specialist help and where to get this, when appropriate.
Similarly, we expect you to:
- Contact the service as soon as it becomes apparent that you need, or will need, assistance.
- Arrive promptly for your appointments and contact us in advance if you need to cancel a meeting.
- Be considerate and honest, providing full and accurate information about your case and bring all relevant information and/or documents with you.
- Follow all agreed action points by the time agreed.
- Inform us immediately of any changes in your circumstances.
All King’s Student Services endeavour to assist you within a holistic support network. We understand that life can be complicated and multi-faceted, and to resolve one issue may require tackling several other problems at the same time. This may require the input of colleagues across student and professional services, and faculties.
Your Money & Housing Advisor will:
- Triage all the issues that are impacting your personal wellbeing and success at King’s.
- Determine which issues we can advise on within our service and outline the options available to you.
- Identify other sources of help and support for the issues outside our area of expertise, signposting you to suitable services or, where appropriate, refer you to teams within King's for additional assistance or to work collectively on your case (for example Disability Support & Inclusion, Student Funding Office, Credit Control, King’s Residences where relevant to the case)
- Consult with those teams to determine the best and most sustainable approach for supporting you, sometimes this may require signposting or referring you to external or statutory sources of support (e.g. local authority housing services, social services, citizen’s advice etc.) which we will discuss with you first unless we have a concern about your safety, in line with the Student of Concern process.
- Determine which other internal teams or individuals may need to be involved in your case in order to resolve it (for example, your department, faculty or student records). Your advisor will discuss what information needs to be shared about your current situation and how best to coordinate with other teams and individuals in order to help you.
- Also take note of the common issues affecting King’s students at this time to provide anonymised feedback and insight into the student experience to university committees, working groups and senior management.
Due to the busy nature of our advice service and to be fair to other students booked for appointments after you, the Advisers reserve the right to cancel your appointment if you arrive more than 10 minutes late and if necessary a new appointment will have to be booked.
Important to know: Continuous non-attendance (two or more missed appointments) with no prior cancellation may result in advice being offered by email or phone only. If you are running late, please contact the Student Services team (020 7848 1234) as soon as possible so that alternative arrangements can be made.
Where applicable, the Money & Housing Advisor will present you with a number of options and/or strategies for tackling your situation. In most situations, we will encourage and empower you to take the next steps for yourself with the option to return for further advice and assistance as and when required.
Where cases are more complex, and some support or advocacy is required, your advisor will establish and confirm the actions that need to be taken, by you and/or by our service or others, within recommended time frames. To help you with your case we'll need you to keep to these time frames or discuss any difficulties you may have doing so with your advisor, like upcoming assessment periods, so that allowances can be made. Similarly, your advisor will inform you if there are likely delays due to current demands on the service, training or annual leave.
We normally close cases when:
- You've been instructed to take action for yourself.
- The case has been successfully concluded.
- The case has been referred elsewhere.
- There are no further actions or advice that we can offer. We will normally confirm this advice and our conclusions in writing.
We will also close your case if:
- You advise us that you no longer need our assistance.
- You are seeking external legal advice on the same or a related matter.
- You have missed two or more contact meetings or emails requesting an update.
- Two months or more have passed with no movement or realistic progress on your case unless there are reasons for this (for example ill health, changes in caring responsibilities) that may require a bespoke approach to supporting you.
- You have misrepresented your circumstances and we believe it’s no longer appropriate to advise you.
- You are subject to a misconduct investigation/criminal investigation or other circumstances that put our staff at risk.
Important to know: We will also inform any internal teams or other third parties that we have been liaising with on your behalf that your case is now closed with the service.
From time-to-time students are employed to work for the service from a pool of Student Services Ambassadors/Interns and Student Money Mentors. They assist us with promotional work and information helpdesks only, and do not have access to the Student Advisor files, student records or our case management system.
Any guidance and information they give is supervised by Specialist Advisors. This will include (but is not restricted to) face-to-face advice at events and campaigns; open days and fairs; email and telephone advice during campaigns and helpdesks; social media administration. They may also help us to manage drop-ins at busy periods. All student staff sign a confidentiality statement confirming that they will not disclose the identity of students they interact with as part of their work for the service.
If you would like to provide anonymous feedback, you can complete our online feedback form.
The Money & Housing Advice team is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to give debt advice in the limited areas of ‘debt counselling’ and ‘debt adjusting’. Our Licence number is 712115. If there are any problems with the handling of your case, you are encouraged to speak to your Advisor in the first instance. For more guidance, read our article How can I make a complaint about the Money & Housing Advice Service?
We keep all our policies under regular review and we will update them accordingly. This policy was last updated on 10 September 2024.