Mitigating Circumstances

We do not provide an email supporting a claim of mitigating circumstances unless you have had a therapeutic consultation or a counselling contract.
When appropriate, the Student Counselling Centre can provide a standard email to support a plea of mitigating circumstances. To be eligible for this, the student must either be, or have been, a client of the service.

• We do not provide psychological or medical assessments
• We cannot provide an email for students that have not had any previous therapeutic contact with the Student Counselling Centre.

No information is given about a student without their consent.
see confidentiality
If you have any questions about the Student Counselling Centre's policy on providing evidence on mitigating circumstances, please feel free to call the Centre and speak to the Head of Service or a core team member.

The Student Counselling Centre Policy on providing Mitigating Circumstances emails

Mitigating Circumstances
"Mitigating circumstances are significantly disruptive and/or unexpected events which are beyond your control (i.e. illness, bereavement) but which might affect your academic performance when submitting assessed work or sitting examinations. (Taught Student Guide)"

Where appropriate, counsellors will provide emails in support of mitigating circumstances where those circumstances interfered with the students' ability to focus on academic work and where the students clearly endeavoured to manage with our help.

The following points contain information and guidelines about when we will provide this kind of email:

• The counsellor needs to be confident that s/he is in a position to make a judgement that the issues that the client has brought to the counselling have seriously affected his or her ability to meet course requirements.
• In order to make this kind of a judgement, the counsellor needs to have a clear awareness and understanding of the client's difficulties.
• Generally, this means that the student has attended a therapeutic consultation process or a counselling contract.
• Providing evidence of this kind for a client needs to come as a result of the counselling and not be the purpose of it.
• Emails will only ever be provided at the student's request and with the student's permission.
• The counsellor will provide a standard email which does not go into any specific details. Any mitigating circumstances letter sent by the SCC, will, however, state the number of sessions attended and the time period.
• Even if a counsellor has seen a student for a therapeutic consultation and several counselling sessions, s/he may not feel that providing this kind of evidence is appropriate.

Emails Confirming Attendance

• In certain circumstances we may provide emails confirming your attendance here at the SCC.  However the provision of an email confirming attendance is not in itself, proof of a mitigating circumstance.  Please discuss this with your counsellor.

Emails Confirming Fitness to Study

• We do not provide emails/letter confirming fitness to study. These letters can only be provided by a doctor.

If you have any further questions, please contact the
Head of the Student Counselling Centre,
Nigel Humphrys:
tel: 0113 343 4107
email: n.r.humphrys@leeds.ac.uk

Further information and details of codes of ethical frameworks can be found on the BACP (www.bacp.co.uk/ethical_framework/) or UKCP (www.psychotherapy.org.uk/) websites.