Students: Counselling

(asked on 2nd February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information his Department holds on the number of university students who have accessed university counselling and well-being services (a) in total and (b) at each university in each year for which figures are available.


Answered by
Sam Gyimah Portrait
Sam Gyimah
This question was answered on 7th February 2018

As autonomous and independent organisations, it is for higher education institutions (HEIs) to determine what welfare and counselling services they need to provide to their students. Each institution will be best placed to identify the needs of their particular student body, including taking actions in line with any legal responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010.

Government does not hold information on the number of students accessing university counselling and wellbeing services.

An independent research report in this area was published on 4 September 2017 by the Institute for Public Policy Research, ‘Not by Degrees: Improving student mental health in the UK's universities’ (https://ippr.org/research/publications/not-by-degrees).

This report states that: “Our survey reveals that HEIs have – over the past five years – experienced significant increases in demand for (overall) student services… 94 per cent report an increase in demand for counselling services, while 61 per cent report an increase of over 25 per cent”.

The department is working closely with Universities UK (UUK) on their ongoing programme of work on mental health in higher education. As part of this, UUK launched their Step Change programme on 4 September 2017, which encourages higher education leaders to adopt mental health as a strategic imperative and implement a whole institution approach.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Green Paper published on 4 December 2017 outlines government’s plans to set up a new national strategic partnership focused on improving the mental health of 16-25 year olds. This partnership will support and build on the work of UUK and consider the Green Paper’s proposed initiatives to improve the mental wellbeing of students in higher education.

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