The document discusses obstacles disabled students face in accessing support from Disabled Students' Allowances (DSA) and proposes solutions. Key issues reported by students include lack of post-assessment support, problems with equipment, and limited specialist learning support. The document recommends improving referral pathways, post-assessment follow-up, auditing service providers, clarifying student expectations, and ensuring assistive technology training effectively builds students' skills. Overall, it argues for strengthening collaborative working practices across the DSA sector to better meet students' needs.

1. Disabled Students Allowances
Delivering on the Promise of
Bespoke Support
Penny Georgiou
Access 1st

2. Principles, Axioms, Scene Setting
“To save myself, I have to save Springfield.”
Homer Simpson’s Epiphany
“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever
failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett (Worstward Ho, 1983)
The Ethical is Practical

3. Key Questions
1. What obstacles do students face in accessing
DSA funded support?
2. How can these obstacles be removed?

4. DSA
• Disabled Students Allowances (DSA) underpins the
provision of bespoke support for disabled students in
Higher Education. This is the promise.
• An intelligent concept - both ethical and pragmatic –
facilitating support for many students, now in its second
decade.
• Funding is attached to the individual student, rather than
located in a generic pool of institutional budgets. Thus it
– Defends against the tendency to erode the autonomy of those
receiving support services by those who offer them.
– Aims to offer students scope for empowering choices about
their education: access to support that can remove unnecessary
obstacles to study.

5. Students
• Our experience of best practice tells us of the
tremendous potential for transformation
here.
• Feedback from students and practitioners
about their experience on the ground, all too
often, tells us that the process can stall in any
one of several places.

6. Practitioners
Issues allowed to become intractable simply
plume attrition, overworking students and
practitioners alike: Disability Advisers, SFE
Awards Team, Equipment Suppliers, Specialist
Learning Support Tutors, Assistive Technology
Trainers, Assessors, and many others.

7. Working Community
• We are charged to provide accessible pathways to
goods and services of consistent and suitable quality
for addressing the study needs of disabled students.
• Where this charge is prioritised, it points the way to
realisation of potential that the DSA offers both to
disabled students and the country that invests in them.
• In order to prevail, this requires acknowledgement of
issues, open discussion and collegiate working
practices among DSA funded practitioners across the
sector.

8. Common problems
Reported by students:
• Confusion about what to do next after funding is agreed.
• Lack of post-report support from Access Centres
• Issues with equipment/set-up
• Issues with accessing suitable NMH provision
– Specialist Learning Support (availability)
– Assistive Technology Training (quality and availability)
• Anything else

9. What do we do about them?
Issues are not difficult to address, if we can
make some reasonable adjustments to the way
that we operate.

10. Culture
The Ethical is Practical
Renew and extend the culture of constructive
and collegiate working relationships existing in
the wider sector of disability support. That
is, not let the delusion of monetary gain for
some ruin the scope of profit for all. (Homer
Simpson’s Epiphany)

11. The DSA Sector
• Sector awareness raising (and training) of the current barriers faced
by disabled students seeking access to effective support services.
• Redefine the remit and responsibilities of key practitioners to
respond to the work needed to be done on the ground.
• Like for like principle to be rigorously applied to services as well as
to equipment.
• Easy access to suitable alternative NMH providers where, for
whatever reason, the student is unable to access the provision
recommended;
• Audit criteria with consequences, including loss of practitioner
status: asking the right questions, in the right place, of the right
people.
• Mechanisms to enable students to be better informed about what
they can expect from specialist services that claim to build skills.

12. Access Centres and Assessors
Needs assessment does not end with the submission of the needs assessment report.
Expert consultants in Strategy Based Needs Assessment, practice needs to include
• Accessible referral pathways for NMH services (quality and availability)
• Support in the post-report phase, assistance with accessing goods and
services, where necessary, including
– Put student in touch with providers directly
– Post report follow up,
– Assistance with finding suitable alternative support providers, where necessary.
• Student-centred response to requests for further assistance from students and
other disability practitioners, within a reasonable time frame;
• Attention and professional response to feedback from students and others to build
a sound working knowledge with which to evaluate goods and services
recommended in terms of:
• Suitable quality – is it fit for purpose?
• Availability – if not, then what is the alternative provision?
• Like for like –what’s the difference? What constitutes real value for money?

13. NMH service providers/SFE
• NMH services, eg, specialist learning support, assistive
technology training) to provide SLAs registered with
SFE, specifying the details of key services as part of
endorsing the like for like principle. Eg,
– Is the student being trained effectively?
– Does training take place on their entire suite of equipment and
home set up (ATT) or not?
– Skype (SpLD/ATT/Mentoring)
– Curriculum (SpLD/ATT)
• This needs to be verified by student feedback.
• Sector mechanisms to enable students to be better
informed about what they can expect from these specialist
services that claim to build skills.

14. Assistive Technology Training
• Succinct, professional, constructive feedback to Access Centres/Assessors
regarding any aspect of the DSA equipment, eg
– Missing or faulty items of equipment,
– Any further needs becoming evident through process of training.
– This to be supported by Access Centres/Assessors responding in a student
centred manner.
• Customisation of equipment/software/accessories, including remote login
pathways to university website;
• Effective teaching - Students are capable of becoming confident and
competent in the use of assistive technology for effective study;
– Sufficiently detailed, nuanced, context specific teaching of strategies for study
using technology.
– Taking into account the working environment, including ergonomics, so that
students can build an effective working knowledge.
– Individualised, taking into account particular student needs. Attentive listening
and evaluation of learner’s pace.