Transcript Support packages

Support packages
Deb Viney
Diversity Advisor, SOAS
Former Head of the Disability Service at
the University of Southampton
Support packages
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Applying to Social Services for
personal care / domestic assistance
• Any student who requires personal care and / or domestic
assistance needs to apply to their local, home area Social
Services (not the department in the area of the University)
• The basic principle is that any personal care / domestic
support the disabled person would need regardless of
where they are living, is funded by Social Services
• The support can then be provided in a variety of ways,
depending (in part) what the specific University has
available.
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Preparation
Before requesting a re-assessment of your care needs from Social
Services (which you will need, in plenty of time, before you go to off
to University):
• Ensure you are claiming all of the benefits you are entitled to in
your own right (parents cannot usually claim on behalf of people
over the age of 18). If not sure, get assistance from a local benefits
advice service or Citizens Advice Bureau
• Think carefully about everything your parents and others currently
do for you – professional carers will probably need to do that in
future. It may help to make a list, think about the tasks you need
done every day, ones which occur regularly but less often (e.g. once
a week) and those which occur infrequently. You need to ensure
that all of these tasks are included in the Social Services care
needs assessment.
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The care needs assessment
• Request a new care needs assessment specifically for going to University.
The Disability Advisor at your chosen Uni should be able to facilitate a visit
for you and the Social Worker / OT, if they are prepared to do that, it can
be very helpful as they get to see how different the environment will be.
• The SW/OT may need to think about any specialist equipment you may
need in your study-bedroom (e.g. hospital bed or powered profiling bed,
hoist, showerchair).
They should also think about:
• domestic assistance - weekdays & weekends
(preparing and cooking food, cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc.)
• personal care - daytime and nighttime
(getting into / out of bed; bathing / showering; getting dressed /
undressed; feeding, etc.)
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Different models for providing care
• External care agency sends carers to campus for each individual
student
- contract is between Social Services and Agency, University has no
clear role (but can facilitate)
- Much depends on the reliability of the Agency and the quality &
consistency of the carers
- Agency responsible for covering sick carers
- University needs to ensure carers can park nearby and that they
have the right identification to be on campus, etc.
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• University contracts an external agency to provide a
shared care package for its disabled students and
charges each student (or their Social Services) a
proportion of the costs
• Complex model – works well if everyone needs full 24
hour care, less so if some people have smaller care
packages as it can be difficult to work out each person’s
contribution
• Works best if all disabled students needing care are colocated in one residence – which restricts students’
choice of location and style of accommodation
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• University directly employs a care team
• Convenient for student & Social Services – but can be
challenges over the costs
• University HR requirements can make the employment
process to slow and too rigid to cope with the relatively late
confirmation of new first year students (insufficient time to
advertise for carers and interview and recruit before start
of term) so it can be difficult to have care in place by the
start of term (but works fairly well for 2nd & 3rd years).
• what happens to existing care staff if the number of
disabled students needing care is lower than average one
year?
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• Social Services directly employs a care team
• Very uncomplicated for student and University
(especially financially)
• Student and University staff don’t have any control
over the care team, quality of provision, etc.
• Who sorts out problems with sickness absence,
inappropriate behaviour by care staff etc.?
• Do carers live on campus or off? If on campus Social
Services should pay cost of carer’s room as part of care
package.
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• Community Service Volunteers provide a care project –
funded by Social Services
• Volunteers likely to be similar age to student
• Must have a back-up arrangement in case a volunteer walks
out or is off sick
• University has to provide someone prepared to supervise
the CSVs (usually this is a Disability Advisor)
• costs £8000 - £9000 per annum per CSV including the CSVs’
accommodation, etc.
• to cover 24 hour package 4 x CSVs are needed
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• Student uses direct payments to directly employ a
personal carer / team
• Student has choice of person to be their carer
• Student has to either take on employer responsibilities
(paying tax & NI, etc.) or their package needs to
include payment for a company to provide these
services
• Need back up arrangements in case carer goes sick
• University needs to facilitate carer’s access to campus
(e.g. parking space, honorary staff status)
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An example of a blended model
for 24 support package
• Community Service Volunteers or Universityemployed support staff provide the oncampus (daytime) part of the care package
along with any academic assistance [funded
by the Disabled Students’ Allowances]
and
• care agency (or other) provide the evening /
night time parts of the support [funded by
Social Services].
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Academic support packages
The DSAs will usually provide:
• assistance with any additional transport costs
• any necessary IT equipment
• other equipment (e.g. ergonomically designed
chair)
• assistance with IT consumables (ink cartridges
etc.) and some internet costs
• “non-medical helpers” (academic support
workers)
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Academic support workers
may include:
• Personal assistant
• Library assistant
• Orientation training (visually impaired students)
• Specialist one-to-one tutor (dyslexia support)
• Mentor
• Teacher of the Deaf sessions
• Notetaker
• Lipspeaker
• BSL interpreter
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Example support package for a Deaf student
Some Deaf students have very extensive needs which can include:
• BSL interpretation for all contact sessions
• Notetaking arrangement (person or remote)
• One to one support sessions with a Teacher of the Deaf
In such a case it is possible that the student’s support worker costs will
exceed the DSAs NMH allocation [currently £20,520 per year].
The University Disability Advisor should assist the student to identify and
apply for additional sources of funding (e.g. charity funds and the
institution’s Access to Learning Fund) to help with the costs.
Ultimately the HE institution has some responsibility under the Equality
Act (2010) for any additional costs which are not covered by other sources
of funding – this does not mean it must cover absolutely all costs, an
unlimited amount, but it should cover reasonable additional costs not
covered by other sources.
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