Students: Mental Health Services

(asked on 20th February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will bring forward proposals to encourage universities and other higher education providers to improve access to mental health services for students.


Answered by
Sam Gyimah Portrait
Sam Gyimah
This question was answered on 23rd February 2018

In higher education, there is already much work underway to improve the quality of mental health services for students, alongside services provided by the NHS, including through the NHS programme Improving Access to Psychological Therapies.

The recent green paper on children and young people’s mental health outlines plans to set up a new national strategic partnership focused on improving the mental health of 16-25 year olds. This includes a proposal to encourage local coalitions between tertiary education providers, local authorities, and health and care commissioners and providers.

The new partnership is also likely to look to support and build on sector-led initiatives in higher education such as University UK’s Step Change project. This calls on higher education leaders to adopt mental health as a strategic priority and adopt a whole-university approach to mental health, embedding it across all policies, cultures, curricula and practice.

As autonomous and independent organisations, higher education institutions (HEIs) 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.

A number of HEIs currently make use of outsourced or external service provision such as 24/7 counselling or support service; online self-help services; a crisis line for signposting to out-of-hours support.

Reticulating Splines