Student Psychological and Counselling Services supporting students remotely

UCL’s Student Psychological and Counselling Services (SPCS) are part of Student Support and Wellbeing (SSW). SSW provide holistic support for all students at UCL, helping them to stay well and perform at the best of their ability.

During lockdown, SPCS has continued to run a full service remotely for all students regardless of their global location, using Microsoft Teams. We’re continuing to offer psychological assessments, counselling, psychiatric assessments and signposting to other internal and external support services. During this crisis SPCS are also working closely with the Students’ Union UCL.

Some students haven’t been able to use Teams due to issues of confidentiality or security and we will see these students as soon as we can when we get back to a face-to-face support provision.

The SPCS team keeps in touch using Teams on a daily and weekly basis through clinical team meetings, daily admin meetings and daily contact with each other. This has helped us work together to ensure the continued smooth running of the service in these unusual times. A challenging aspect to working online is service provision for high-risk and vulnerable students, and we have adapted our Daily Duty Response Rota and other procedures to ensure effective and safe support for this group.

During these very challenging times, some NHS psychological support services have been reduced. This has meant additional demand on support services such as SSW.

However, we are pleased to say that currently we are managing very well with the demand on SPCS and have a minimal waiting time for assessments.

As staff members, you can help ensure all our students receive any support they might need by reminding them about SPCS and encouraging them to register for support if they feel it might be helpful.

For further information about everything we do and how students can access our support, please visit our website.

Stay safe and well,

Dr Barry Keane (Acting Head of SPCS)
Dr Sonia Greenidge (Acting Deputy Head of SPCS)