Dear All,

Re: disability disclosure by a blanket consent form

Charles Christapoulos of Univeiisty of Dundee, wrote his data protection 
statement for disabled students:
"Personal information supplied on this form may be disclosed to relevant 
departments within the university.  Data will be used to monitor the 
services provided by the Centre.

In order to enable us to provide this service, we may need to consult with 
private or public organisations outside the university.  Therefore we seek 
your permission to disclose- when necessary- details of your disability/ 
special needs to any such organisation.
Box tick if you agree
Box tick if you disagree

I undertsand that I have to re-register annually with the disability support 
centre and that the onus is on me  to inform my Faculty and Department (s0 
of my disability/ special needs.

signed  dated  "


I have been a member of this list nearly for one year.  I have found the 
list very helpful to learn about data protection issues in colleges and 
universities in general.

However, my interest professional, personal and academic interest has been 
focused on the issues regarding data protection for disabled students in 
colleges and universities.

There was a recent consultation on the legislating service provision for 
disabled students between 20 March and 28 April 2000 where the consultation 
document was published at http://www.dfee.gov.uk/sen/consult.doc

One of the consultation questions was concerned with the disclosure of the 
disability status in colleges and universities.

It is well established practice that there is a correlation between the 
disclosure of disability status and the services received.  In other words, 
the disability status of students must be known by respective service 
providers.

However, the main issue here is that there has not been enough information 
about this issue based on practice in colleges and universities.

For example, it is an established practice that the disability information 
is collected at the admission stage (initially by UCAS although on 
"voluntary" basis, and through the reference letters, interviews etc.) and 
there is not information how this information is used in making admission 
decisions.

However statistics as well as personal evidence cited in academic and 
professional papers suggest that disabled students have been discrminated 
against at the admission stage.  Indeed teh evidence both oral and written 
given to the recent parliamentary inquiry support this argument.

Coming back to the issues raised in recent messages, the main issue here is 
the lack of any safeguards to protect these disabled students against any 
discrimination, harassment, victimisation arising from the disclosure of the 
disability status.

This is more true for the disabled students  with strong attached stigma 
such as learning disabilities, mental disabilities etc.

The cited data protection document in recent message does not include any 
enforcement characteristics such as any statement on the misuse of the data 
collected from the disabled students.  DIsabled stduents should have a 
remedy in teh cases where they are made suffer due to misuse of the 
information about their disability status.

It also covers an alarming statement that this information would be made 
available to external organisations. Such a blanket consent form would be 
ultimately harmful for these students.  For example, the references to 
potential employers should not have any disability information without the 
express consent of students concerned.

The legal position in the US is that students are asked to give prior 
consent for each different case where the type of information and the 
receipent of this inofrmation is stated very explicitly.  There are strict 
enforment chracterisitcs to prevent the misuse of this information in the 
consent form.  The ways students may wish to make complaints about the misue 
of this information is explicitly stated in the forms.

One recent high profile example of the misuse of the consent forms was in 
teh case of a  NHS hospital where an ambiguous consent form was used to 
remove all organs of babies for many years apparently for research purposes 
where the signers of this form were very distraught with the loss of their 
children and perceive that only a small tissue sampel would be collected not 
all organs of their children.

It is also well established that the members of staff, both academic and 
nonacademic in many colleges and universities have not been well informed 
about the needs and rights of disabled students in colleges and universites.

Indeed the above Inquiry reports explicitly cite evidence where disabled 
professors have been victimised not disabled students and they did not 
receive any reposnse to their enquiries for years.

The response made to the above consultation document where the issues 
mentioned in this message were briefly disucssed may be found at 
http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~cx639/disbill.htm
Any comment and feedback on this document as well as this message would be 
most welcome.

Ozcan Konur
City University
[log in to unmask]
http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~cx639/index.htm


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