Students with deafness’ access to counselling services at the University of Education, Winneba-Ghana

This qualitative study sought to explore deaf students access to counselling services at the University of Education, Winneba. The study was underpinned by Murray’s system of needs theory, phenomenological research was adopted as the design and a purposive sampling technique was used to select twelve deaf students and two counsellors for the study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically via verbatim transcriptions, coding, drawing of themes and discussions of findings. The findings of the study indicated that deaf students have unique counselling needs such as educational needs, financial, health and personal needs that are often not adequately addressed by the existing counselling services at the University of Education, Winneba. The findings again revealed that deaf students often perceived counselling as mere advise-giving, not relevant for the needs and is meant for the hearing students only. Deaf students however, as revealed by the students resort to accessing counselling services from lecturers, church leaders, peers and sign language interpreters who are most times closer to them and who again can communicate with them through sign language. Based on the study's findings, the study recommended collaboration between lecturers who offer counselling services and the University counselling professionals, lecturers should be aware of their role as facilitators and the limits of their counselling capabilities, The University Management in collaboration with Counseling Unit should recruit and train counselors who are proficient in sign language and have a deep understanding of deaf culture and experiences. The Counseling Unit should offer online counseling options with sign language interpretation for students who may face challenges accessing on-campus services.