University Alliance (UA) has published its Written Evidence to the Joint Inquiry into Children and Young People’s Mental Health.
This inquiry, jointly launched by the Education and Health and Social Care Committees, looks at the role universities should play in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of students, and the reforms needed to create a coherent, safe and sustainable system.
UA’s position highlights how universities are essential partners in prevention, early support and education.
Alliance universities see first-hand the rising complexity of student need: more students are arriving with overlapping challenges including trauma, neurodivergence, financial strain, social isolation and acute distress.
At the same time, expectations of university support have grown significantly, while statutory services have become harder to access.
NHS thresholds for treatment have risen, crisis teams often do not attend serious incidents, and students frequently fall between services when they move between home and university.
As a result, universities are increasingly left to manage clinical‑level risk without the mandate, resources or information required to do so safely.
Recommendations
To create a safe, coherent and equitable mental health system for students in higher education, UA has urged the committees to recommend three specific system‑level reforms:
Recommendation 1: A national template for NHS-university data sharing.
Government should develop a national template for data sharing agreements between universities and NHS mental health services and set a clear expectation that Integrated Care Boards engage with universities in their areas to establish local agreements.
Recommendation 2: Clarify the respective responsibilities of universities and the NHS.
Government should issue clear guidance to NHS trusts, local authorities and police setting out what universities are and what they can reasonably be expected to do. Students should be explicitly included within NHS planning and commissioning frameworks. ICBs and local authorities should account for student populations in their health needs assessments.
Recommendation 3: Support for universities to set clear accountable, non-clinical baselines for what they will provide, not a statutory duty of care
Government should support the approach being developed by the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce: outcome-focused, evidence-based baselines for what universities will provide, subject to transparent governance and accountability. This should be instead of a statutory duty of care that would draw them into quasi-clinical territory.
Susanna Kalitowski, Director of Policy at University Alliance said of the inquiry:
“Alliance universities are deeply committed to the health and wellbeing of the students they serve. Every day, staff across our member institutions support students through difficult experiences – often going well beyond what universities are resourced or mandated to do.
“But this commitment carries risk. The more universities step into the gaps left by statutory services, the more is expected of them, and the greater the likelihood that they will be held responsible for failures that properly belong elsewhere. The sector is caught in a dynamic where doing more creates the expectation to do even more, and where the consequences of not meeting those expanding expectations will fall on universities, not on the statutory services that have withdrawn.
“We urge the Committees to use this inquiry to help break that cycle. What is needed is more clarity about what universities are and are not; the boundaries between educational support and clinical provision; the respective responsibilities of the education and health systems; and students’ entitlements as citizens within the NHS. Accountability for student wellbeing must be shared across the system, not loaded onto universities.”
