The excellence of Lewisham College’s mental health and wellbeing services has been recognised with a highly prestigious Association of Colleges (AoC) Beacon Commendation in the AoC Beacon Awards 2019-20.

The Beacon Commendation is given by the AoC to highlight outstanding innovation, impact and sustainability in further education colleges across the UK in different spheres. This year, the Beacon Award commendations were chosen from among around 140 applications.

Lewisham College has won the honour for its commitment to supporting students’ mental health and wellbeing, and the innovative programmes it has put in place over the past few years.

The College’s ‘Be Well, Do Well’ campaign, which has been running for three years, has been very successful in raising awareness of mental health issues and tackling any perceived stigma head-on.

It has also introduced an online questionnaire for students which helps to build a picture of how each student is feeling about different aspects of their life and flag up any issues early on. To date, over 1,000 students have engaged with the questionnaire and hundreds have been successfully referred to counselling and other services.

Wellbeing Officer Roger Price commented: “We are delighted to have this recognition of the work we are doing across the College to support students experiencing difficulties. The programmes we’ve put in place make all the difference to the wellbeing of our students, helping them to cope with exam stress and other issues, and changing negative behaviours which have often been preventing them from realising their true potential.”