King's College London

About us:

The King’s community is dedicated to the service of society. King’s Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world. Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us.

The Counselling and Mental Health Support Service is part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King’s students and their education. As a directorate we manage the student lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes, working closely with King’s faculties to do so.

The Counselling and Mental Health Support Service provides a highly specialised Counselling and Mental Health service to students who are often in distress and require sensitive, timely access to psychological and mental health support.

About the role:

The role requires Counsellors to provide confidential psychological and emotional support to students, addressing a wide range of personal, social and academic challenges. The Counsellor will have extensive experience and skill in carrying out initial assessments with students, assessing student risk, previous mental health history and identifying therapeutic goals which are suitable for a short term therapeutic intervention. The Counsellor will manage a case load of individual clients, monitoring progress as well as referring students to internal and external supports where appropriate. The Counsellor will work within an experienced Counselling team and contribute to clinical case discussions.

​This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to work in a dynamic environment where we embrace new initiatives and ways to improve the provision of mental health support for our students. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in working with a diverse client population within a valued service.

  ​We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role.

This is a part time role (50% FTE; 17.5 hours per week) and you will be offered an indefinite contract. Please note that as the role is part time, the salary displayed on the advert will be pro-rated accordingly.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Demonstrated ability to carry out assessments with students, identifying risk, mental health history and therapeutic goals.
2. Experience providing therapy in a short term five session, solution focused model in an HE or educational stetting or NHS therapeutic service.
3. Demonstrated high-level competence in providing therapeutic interventions that are trauma informed and culturally appropriate with individuals of diverse backgrounds and presenting concerns.
4. Experience of balancing the need to share information appropriately to ensure the effective management of risk with the need for confidentiality and data protection legislation compliance, and escalating risk where deemed necessary
5. Demonstrated empathy for, and understanding of, the psychosocial issues and concerns experienced and demonstrated by students undertaking university level studies.
6. Possesses high-level communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills, including liaison and influencing skills to work collaboratively, flexibly, and productively within and across teams to provide advice on student mental health issues and service to students.
7. Applicants must have a relevant academic degree and must hold the proper license or accreditation to legally provide counselling services in the UK, e.g., BACP, UKCP, HCPC, BPS. Accepted degrees include an M.A. or Ph.D. in Counselling or Psychotherapy, or a MA, Ph.D. or Psy.D. in Clinical or Counselling Psychology.

Desirable criteria

1. Previous experience providing counselling in an HE setting
2. Training and experience facilitating long term therapeutic groups or short term CBT or similar group interventions

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information:

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Interviews are provisionally due to be held on Thursday 22nd January 2026.