Universities should have 'duty of care' for students, says grieving mum of UEA student

The grieving mother of a 21-year-old who took his own life says universities should have a legal duty of care for their students - to stop mistakes made with her son being repeated.

Theo Brennan-Hulme was in his first year at the University of East Anglia when he was found dead in his room.

An inquest found he had died by suicide - and flagged a failure by local NHS teams to accept him for treatment.

But his family believes the Norwich university also missed vital opportunities to save the creative writing student before his death in March 2019.

Campaign group For The 100 said Theo was one of 100 university students who took their lives every year.

On Tuesday, the families of many of those young people handed in a petition to the government calling for educational institutions to be given more legal responsibility for their students' welfare.

Among the signatories is Esther Brennan, Theo's mum, who said a simple phone call to her could have made all the difference.

"The university let Theo down massively," she said. "It was a catalogue of errors and his death was preventable."

Ms Brennan said the family, from Staffordshire, had chosen the UEA because it promoted a series of services to support mental health.

But despite having written consent from Theo to contact his mum, and a direct request from Ms Brennan to be called if he deteriorated, the family was left in the dark when he started to struggle.

"All they needed to do was to ring home, to ring 999, to ring a crisis team, to tell the people who could look after him what was happening" said his mother.

The For The 100 petition has been signed by more than 120,000 people. They want universities to be governed by similars rules that require employers to keep their staff safe at work.

Ms Brennan, from Stoke on Trent, said she wished her "beautiful middle child" had got a job instead of choosing to study since a boss would have been legally bound to support him.

"It's dangerous not to have a duty of care," she added.

The UEA said the petition raised "important issues that need to be explored and carefully considered".

Jon Sharp, director of academic services, added: "Universities are committed to playing their part in seeking to support our students and working closely with others in including families and health care providers so that we can tackle the complex issues as a community.

"UEA has invested significantly in mental health and wellbeing services in recent years, including introducing an additional team of Residential Life advisors to provide 24/7 support to students living in UEA residences, doubling our number of mental health advisors, and appointing student services advisors to work within schools of study to help academic staff to support students."

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