Counselling continues: SPCS are still here for you

We’re 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 your global location, using Microsoft Teams and Zoom. 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 of you haven’t been able to use Teams due to issues of confidentiality or security. If this is the case for you, we’ll see you 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.

We are running a wide range of events to support students in self-isolation and help to look after mental health and wellbeing during this challenging time. Find out more on the website. 

SPCS are working alongside Care First, our partner phone and online support provider, to ensure that comprehensive support continues to be available to you 24/7 throughout the COVID -19 outbreak and until further notice.

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.  Please do be aware that demand on the service normally fluctuates throughout the academic year and some times of the year will be busier than others.

Remember that we’re here to help in SPCS should you need us. You can read more about what counselling is and if it might be helpful for you on our website. If counselling sounds like it might be beneficial, please complete our registration form and we’ll get back to you for an initial consultation shortly.

For further information about everything we do and how you 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)

Updated by Student Support and Wellbeing, November 2020