07 Nov

Mental Health Services in London Universities and Colleges Suffering from Lack of Funding.

Lambeth College -Image from ‘thisisclapham.co.uk’

Universities and Colleges in London are struggling to provide efficient mental health services to their students due to lack of Government funding.

Although it has been announced by MP Philip Hammond that ‘Mental Health services will receive a £2bn funding boost’, London Universities and Colleges are still left in crisis struggling to support their students wellbeing needs.

Gemma Dickson, Safeguarding and welfare co-ordinator for Lambeth college, said: “We, as a college do not receive enough funding from the government to provide help for our students.”

“On site, we currently only have 3 trainee counsellors, who are not fully qualified, and are really just here to gain credits towards their qualifications.”

“We do not at this time have the means to employ a fully qualified counsellor, as our funding that supported our previous counsellor was dropped, leaving us with little resources to offer our students, such as referral to external counselling, which all have very long waiting lists.”

“We need our funding for this very important matter to be increased as soon as possible, so we can employ a full time, on site mental health nurse. Our students are clearly being effected by the lack of help on offer for them, it needs to stop now before things get to a crisis level.”

NHS England did not respond to a request for comment.