Mental health counsellors in colleges and universities: FOI release

Information requested

Question 1: The Scottish Government announced plans to fund 80 additional mental health counsellors in colleges and universities between 2019 and 2023. Please confirm how many of those new counsellors were allocated for Scottish universities.

Question 2: Please confirm how many counsellors (FTE) have been appointed at Scottish universities using funds by the Scottish Government since 2019.

Response

1. Since 2019/20 we have invested more than £11.5 million to support our commitment to introduce more than 80 additional mental health counsellors in colleges and universities. Funds are provided through the Scottish Funding Council which allocates them to support the recruitment of new counsellors.

Please see below a breakdown of funding to higher education institutions in support of this commitment:

Higher Education
2019/20 - £1,740,000
2020/21 - £1,740,000
2021/22 - £1,806,000

Funding was also provided to colleges to address the issue of equity of access with no detriment to universities.

2. The latest figures from the Scottish Funding Council show that an additional 48 FTE mental health counsellors have been appointed by universities through this programme, as of April 2022.

In total, an additional 89 FTE additional counsellors have been appointed across both colleges and universities since the programme began.

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