Lessons from targeted mental health support for students across England

The programme represented more than £3 million of investment across 18 projects in England between 2021 and 2023, backed by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, supporting 3,241 students through funded interventions.

Wavehill’s evaluation examined how these approaches contributed to outcomes at programme level, while also supporting funded projects to assess their own impact through templates, guidance, training and ongoing support. This helped strengthen evidence collection across a diverse portfolio of interventions while building a shared evidence base across the programme.

What Wavehill delivered

Wavehill designed and delivered a programme-wide evaluation approach for the Mental Health Funding Competition, following its previous independent evaluation of the Office for Students’ Mental Health Challenge Competition to support consistent evidence collection and learning across 18 funded projects.

Working directly with funded providers, Wavehill supported individual projects to design and strengthen their own evaluation approaches, providing guidance and tools for impact measurement and helping them apply appropriate methods that drew on both qualitative and quantitative evidence, with indicators linked to their own aims. This work also facilitated shared learning across funded projects and helped identify and disseminate effective practice across the higher education sector, feeding into evidence and recommendations to inform future programme development.

A significant part of the programme involved supporting projects to think about how students could be meaningfully involved in shaping mental health initiatives. Project-level evaluation reports recorded 1,057 students involved in co-creation activities, and Wavehill’s dedicated research on co-creation generated practical learning on engaging students from groups that may face additional barriers to accessing support, and on ensuring their experiences informed programme design and delivery. 316 staff members were also reported to have received training.

What it helped to understand

The evaluation provided a programme-level view of how targeted, intersectional approaches contributed to student mental health support, including how different intervention types operated across varied contexts, how co-creation and targeted engagement shaped delivery, how outcomes for students were captured and evidenced, how learning could be shared across institutions, and how strategic partnerships supported delivery and impact. It also helped identify which approaches showed promise for wider adoption across the higher education sector.

The programme brought together a diverse range of interventions:

• Peer support and mentoring
• Digital resources and online tools
• Awareness-raising activity
• Student and staff training
• Links to NHS or local health services

This contributed to a more structured evidence base on targeted mental health support in higher education, helping identify effective practice, common challenges and lessons for future investment.

Impact

This work supported funded organisations to strengthen their evaluation practice and helped establish a stronger evidence base on what works in supporting students who may face barriers to accessing mental health support. It generated learning on student co-creation, partnership working and innovative approaches to delivery, providing practical insights that other higher education providers could adopt.

These findings informed future programme design, investment decisions and sector practice, demonstrating the value of coordinated evaluation, cross-project learning and evidence-sharing in understanding outcomes at scale and supporting continuous improvement across the sector.

The report is available to read here.