Emily Wagner

Estranged and Care Experienced Students Officer

Hi, I'm Emily and I'm estranged and also kinship care-experienced.

I'm the founder of this new network and I am excited to hopefully be its first officer. I am very passionate about advocating for estranged and care-experienced students (EaCES) and created the London-wide informal network for EaCES, for which I received the Imperial Outstanding Student Achievement Award 2024. For over 2 years, I have worked with All of Us UK and EaCES charity to campaign for our community and have led the national annual Estranged Students Solidarity Week campaign since the disbandment of StandAlone HE. I hope to apply my experiences with these charities and my experience with union processes in founding this network to make Imperial a more welcoming place for EaCES. My plans for this network include:

Celebrating awareness days/weeks to build community and normalise our presence at Imperial
Improving the student accommodation situation for our community
Bringing our community together at Christmas and during the Summer holidays, which are some of the toughest time periods for EaCES
Work to improve mental health support for our community

and I have already committed the union to lobby for the reinstatement of a scholarship to support estranged and care-experienced students.