What Vietnamese parents mean when they ask "is it safe?"

Institutions hear the safety question constantly and answer it with campus security statistics. That is usually an answer to a different question.

What is usually being asked

• Will my child be looked after? Who notices if they stop attending. Who calls if they are ill.
• Will they be isolated? Is there a Vietnamese community, and is there support in a language they can use when they are struggling.
• Can I reach someone? A parent seven time zones away wants a name and a working contact route.
• Is the accommodation actually supervised? Particularly for students under eighteen, where "independent living" reads very differently here than it may in your prospectus.

What answers it well

Concrete arrangements, not reassurance. A named pastoral contact. An attendance policy that describes who is notified and when. An emergency contact route that a parent can test. A description of what the first week looks like hour by hour.

What does not

Crime statistics, however good, and the phrase "we take student welfare seriously". Both are heard as deflections, because they are answers to a question nobody asked.

Worth doing once

Write a one-page answer to the safety question in Vietnamese, addressed to a parent rather than a student. It will be read more carefully than any other page you produce.

Answering families in their own language: Vietnamese Website for Your Institution →