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 Clinical Assessors to carry out psychosocial, mental health assessments to students who have self-referred to the Counselling Service. The role requires highly developed skills and experience in carrying out mental health assessments, identifying risk and implementing safety planning with students. The assessment is also used to assess the suitability of the students access to the Counselling Service which provides a short term, five session, solution focused service model. The role  involves referring students to external support where appropriate, for example, crisis mental health services, GP, NHS specialist services, other community services external to King’s. The role also requires Clinical Assessors to become familiar with the internal Student Support Services available to students and refer students appropriately. 

The Clinical Assessor is involved in triaging students who have self-referred to the Counselling Service. The role also involves allocating students, post-triage, to counsellors and Mental Health Advisors in the team. Full training will be provided, and the Clinical Assessor will join an existing team of triage and allocations specialists within the Counselling and Mental Health Service team.

​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 full time post (35 hours per week) and you will be offered a maternity cover contract.

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; therapeutic goals and suitability for students to access Counselling in a short term, five session, solution focused service delivery model.
2. 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, safeguarding obligations and escalating risk where necessary.
3. Demonstrated empathy for, and understanding of, the psychosocial issues and concerns experienced by students undertaking university level studies.
4. Demonstrated high-level competence in providing therapeutic assessments that are trauma informed and culturally appropriate with individuals of diverse backgrounds and presenting concerns.
5. Experience triaging client / patient referrals to a Counselling or Mental Health Service, identifying suitable referrals and processing those referrals through the service’s triaging and allocation system; identify referrals which are not suitable and communicate this to students with a clear referral pathway to internal and external services.  
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; letter writing where required to support student’s applications for mitigating circumstances, and other letters as required on request – where suitable.
7. Applicants must have a relevant academic professional qualification and current professional accreditation in the field of mental health nursing, mental health social work or psychology.

Desirable criteria

1. Previous experience providing student mental health support in an HE setting

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 due to be held on Weds 28th January 2026.