Ms Treasa Fox:

There is a lot of collaboration with psychological counsellors. We meet USI regularly and we work on the HEA Connecting for Life working group. This oversees a lot of the sector-wide funding and delivery. In terms of programmes, Togetherall is an evidence-based, anonymous, peer support platform. That was created on the back of six months research into what could be a really beneficial service that would augment and work alongside the counselling services. As Professor Dooley mentioned, there are different levels of intervention. For some students it might just those normative transitional stresses and strains, as well as finance and things like that, but it also caters for those with more severe mental health difficulties in that it is clinically moderated. There are 24-hour mental health professionals on that platform. They are trained to escalate to emergency services when the need arises and then also action with the counselling services the further resources and treatment that somebody might need.

As for working with the USI and delivery of other programmes that have been of benefit, the text support service, 50808, was launched in September 2020 and is a key work partnership with the higher education institutions, whereby we can get high-level data at the end of each year about the usage of that service. That started pre-pandemic but we were very happy to have it when we all went into lockdown and isolation. That was in response to the USI survey launched in 2020, which indicated that around 26% of students wanted a text-based support service provided by the institution. Just under 27% wanted a text-based support service provided by an external service. Our identification of 50808, because it is a HSE service that we promote and endorse, spoke to both of them at the time.

The other sector-wide programme that has been really beneficial has been specific suicide intervention training. It is called the collaborative assessment and management of suicidality. This is on the back of joint funding from the HEA and the HSE. We were able to train 235 counsellors across the country in student counselling services in terms of that specific focus on how to reduce suicidal risk and work with suicidal students on campus.