SPEQS (Student Services Partnerships Evaluation and Quality Standards)

During the first year of the Student Mental Health Partnerships project, the University of Sheffield and PsychUP for Wellbeing researchers visited the seven universities collaborating in this national project. We looked at what data is collected by student services, how student services are working in partnership with services in other sectors (e.g. local NHS services) and staff members’ perceptions of the challenges to, and potential advantages of, strengthening these partnerships.  

The team have analysed this data and identified themes organised within a framework of good practice (e.g. service direction and purpose; team working etc). We are also currently running a series of co-production activities at each of the universities, to consult on how strengths and issues are experienced by students. 

In the second year of the project, we are translating these findings into a toolkit, which we hope will be useful for universities within the partnership and beyond. The toolkit will include research, practice and policy recommendations, a basket of measures which university services can use to monitor outcomes and case studies of where partnerships are working well.  

The SPEQS project is coordinated by Emma Broglia. Find out more about Emma's research via her departmental profile and twitter.