Funded projects
Mental health funding competition: Using innovation and intersectional approaches to target mental health support for students
Higher education providers can bid for funding to explore innovative and intersectional approaches to target mental health support for students.
The Department of Health and Social Care has provided £1 million of investment to the Office for Students for this funding competition.
Find out more about the mental health funding competition
Mental Health Challenge Competition: achieving a step change in mental health outcomes for all students
In October 2018 we launched a £6 million Challenge Competition to help higher education providers, working with students, students’ unions and partners such as the NHS and charities, to generate new approaches to mental health issues.
In June 2019 we announced the 10 successful projects. The projects cover a variety of innovative approaches to improving student mental health outcomes and includes more than 50 partners from a wide range of organisations.
In August 2020 we published a short report exploring the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on the delivery of the projects.
In September 2020 we published an evaluation report on the delivery phase of the Challenge Competition to find early findings for the sector.
See the projects funded by the Challenge Competition
Catalyst fund: supporting mental health and wellbeing for postgraduate research students
To support the mental health and wellbeing of postgraduate research students, we worked with Research England to deliver 17 projects, with a combined £1.5 million investment.
The projects started in March 2018 and concluded in January 2020.
In October 2020 Research England published a report on the programme. The report seeks to examine the impact of a range of prevention, early intervention, and support activities on the mental health and wellbeing of postgraduate research students to determine effective practice using an evaluation framework developed by Vitae.
See the projects funded by the Catalyst fund
Guidance and collaboration
In addition to our funded projects, we have also:
- produced a mental health briefing note looking at the ways universities and colleges are supporting the mental health needs of their students during the coronavirus pandemic and signposting to sources of advice
- published case studies demonstrating some of the ways universities, colleges and others are supporting the mental health needs of their students during the coronavirus pandemic
- written an Insight brief and produced accompanying analysis exploring the differential outcomes for students with a declared mental health condition, with other characteristics
- shared effective practice to inform the development of evidence-based policy to drive change across the sector
- part funded guidance to help university leaders prevent student suicides, published in September 2018 by Universities UK (UUK) and Papyrus
- provided funding and support to Student Minds to develop a University Mental Health Charter
- joined UUK’s Mental Health in HE Advisory Group which is shaping and supporting UUK’s programme of work to improve mental health in universities.
