Therapeutic Support

Once you have submitted your registration form, you will receive a confirmation email that we have received it. We will then read and triage your registration form and you will receive an email telling you what service you have been allocated to and giving support available/useful resources to use while you wait for an appointment. 

You will receive upto 5 ongoing therapeutic / Counselling sessions with either a Therapeutic Practitioner or Counsellor. This will either be a member of our in-house team or a Counsellor or Practitioner from our partnership provider, Randstad. These sessions can be online or in person on your preference and you will see the same person for all 5 sessions unless you want to change for any reason. You can find out more about your sessions in our MHWB Service FAQ.

We aim to have a first appointment offered within 30 working days of you receiving your triage email, however at busy times you may wait a little longer.  There is a lot of support available while you wait for your appointment including UBheard our 24/7 Mental Health Support Line (birmingham.ac.uk) and Pause drop-in sessions (birmingham.ac.uk). You can also find a whole range of online self help guides Online self help resources covering a wide variety of issues.

In most cases we can triage to the most appropriate service based on information provided in the registration form and CORE 34. However sometimes we may need to invite you for an initial assessment appointment to find out more about your circumstances before we can make a Service offer.

This may be because information in your registration form indicates a high risk of harm to yourself or suggests a levels of complexity beyond the scope of the Service. It may also be to determine your current registration status or because we need more information to help make the triage decision. At your assessment appointment, the Practitioner will discuss the most suitable support, any referrals and send you a follow up email with all the information on.

We aim to offer Assessment appointments within 10 working days of receiving your registration form. These appointments are 30 minutes in length and are one off sessions - so if you go onto have ongoing sessions they may be with another Practitioner. We can only offer Rapid Assessment Appointments these appointments between 8.30am – 3.30pm so if you have evening only availability, please do attend this appointment at the given time and we can then discuss ongoing evening sessions where appropriate

UBHeard provide 24/7 in the moment Counselling support and also offer up to 6 Solution Focussed sessions where suitable. These can be delivered over the phone or via video Counselling. If you have been triaged to UBHeard please contact them for an assessment or follow the instructions in your triage email if you would like us to pass your details to UBHeard for them to call you direct

MHWB Service FAQ - please read ahead of your appointment.

Unfortunately we are unable to work with students on a Leave of Absence however you can register for support with External Services and then contact us once you have returned from your Leave of Absence.

If you are a student studying abroad or a student who lives abroad and studies online and you require mental health and wellbeing services, please contact UBHeard, or your local GP/psychological services for support; your local university/study abroad contact may also help and advise you. We also have Self Help Guides & apps and online resources  which may be of benefit to you, and we will where possible support the Study Abroad team and university partners to support you. 

Please provide as much availability as you can so that we can try to allocate you as quickly as possible. We endeavour to offer appointments within your preferred availability however where this is not possible we will offer you alternative appointment times which you can choose to attend or instead use the 24/7 service UBHeard at a time of your convenience. 

It is not advised to work with more than one therapist at the same time. If you are already receiving psychological support from another agency we will ask you to re-register with Mental health and Wellbeing Service once that support has finished. 

Once you have seen a Practitioner we can provide a memo detailing the contact you have had with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Service however we cannot comment on any academic impact. Your memo will contain: date of registration, number of sessions offered and attended, CORE score and a brief summary of the presenting issues you described in your registration form. This will be emailed to you as a pdf.

Unfortunately, we cannot offer ongoing sessions with externally registered students. However, you can access support through community services.

Please note that evening appointments are available but only online. Face-to-face appointments are available Monday - Friday between 08:30 and 17:00 (last appointment starting at 15:30).

UBHeard is available 24/7 for mental health support.

If you do have a concern with any aspect of your contact with us, there are several steps you can take. We'll always endeavour to handle this concern appropriately, with your wellbeing as our main priority.

• To begin with, try to talk to your Practitioner. They'll always be willing to look at the reasons for your concerns and will try to explore ways in which matters can be resolved. Please don’t worry about offending them – they'll be more than prepared to think about what might need to change in order to make your sessions more productive or to solve the issue that you've raised.
• If talking to your Practitioner doesn’t resolve matters for you, you can email the Head of Student Wellbeing and Therapeutic Support Sue Dalton-Knight with your concern at 

  s.j.dalton-knight@bham.ac.uk

• If you have been seeing Sue, you may email the Head of Student Wellbeing and Partnerships, James Mason at j.g.mason@bham.ac.uk. Your concern will be acknowledged within 5 working days, and you'll receive a full response within 2 weeks of receipt of your concern