Rebecca,
You wrote:
"If educational support assistants are wrongly expected to undertake personal care duties, then you are asking for 2 totally different areas of expertise to be covered by one person, which means that, both in applicants and in actual undertaking of the work and professional development, you are seriously compromising the level of educational and study support expertise that students are able to access."
I have to say that I disagree with this - I spent a year as a support worker with disabled students, and while I was primarily there for academic support, we (the support workers) provided social and personal support as well (albeit funded by the student's Social Services Dept, rather than the LEA). This provided a level of consistancy for the students, intelligent gradate Academic support and reliable personal care (in which we were trained). It left the volunteers with a double helping of experience, and to some extent reduced administration for the department.
I think that your comment indicates that a capable person could not provide both types of support professionally and this is not the case in my experience. This is providing of course, that there are separate job descriptions for each - it is not fair to expect all academic assistants to do personal support, nor for all personal support workers to help with advanced educational work.
However, I do agree that academic departments, and the public in general, should be more aware of people who use personal support, and that interaction should be with the individual, not the assistant, unless the invidual requests otherwise.
Adam
(p.s. I would also like to point out that with a hotmail email address it is very hard to know where a person is coming from, and so respondants should take this into account.)
------
Adam Taussik
Disabilities Officer
Disability Service
Building 16, c/o Accommodation Office
University of Southampton
Highfield Campus, SO17 1BJ
Tel: 023 8059 5691 - int. 25691
-----Original Message-----
From: R. M. Mc Donald [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thu 27/05/2004 13:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Job descriptions for Notetakers
It seems such a shame that so many people on these discussion lists feel that they are able to be sarcastic toward others, when any submission to the list is given freely and only in order to add to the knowledge pool of people who work in this area, which is evolving all the time, and so our learning curve is one where we learn from each other. I also feel that it is strange that you have posted your unnecessarily negative, aggressive, extremely condescending and overtly personal response on the public list, as well as to me personally. I have several years of expertise in this very area, and don't answer to a 'line manager', so this is rather an 'assumption'. My only concern is that students' educational experience is further improved and enriched, and if a sharing of professional experience and information can address that objective, then this list is then doing a great job.
I love my work, and if asked to write a synopsis of my professional experiences, about 1% of it would be suggestions for how to make things better for students, based on negative experiences (as in my first post), and the other 99% would be an account of all the things that do work, and all of the people, colleagues and students, and experiences that I have learned from and about, and enjoyed being fortunate enough to work with. Unfortunately sometimes, the things that drive us are the things that we see are holding things back, so we bring them up, and so we end up discussing the negative oftentimes, rather than the positive, which takes care of itself. I am only sorry that I unintentionally and inadvertently offended you so much, for you to respond as you did. Negativity only seems to make people more negative.
I don't thank you, but I do wish you well.
Rebecca
----- Original Message -----
From: Baxter, Chris <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: R. M. Mc Donald <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ; Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff. <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:44 PM
Subject: RE: Job descriptions for Notetakers
Well Becs, I am delighted to have provided you with a platform and hope that the catharsis helps, I would say that you seem to be making some assumptions and that your mailing is not really strongly related to my question, perhaps more related to others’ responses? I hope you have the opportunity to feed these points back to your line manager wherever you work.
Thank you
Chris Baxter
0115 848 6163 voice and text
0115 848 4371 fax
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/sss/disability/ <http://www.ntu.ac.uk/sss/disability/>
This email is intended solely for the addressee. It may contain private or confidential information. If you are not the intended addressee, you must take no action on it nor show a copy to anyone. Please reply to this email to highlight the error. Opinions and information in this email which do not relate to the business of Nottingham Trent University shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by the university.
-----Original Message-----
From: R. M. Mc Donald [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 May 2004 12:37
To: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
Cc: Baxter, Chris
Subject: Re: Job descriptions for Notetakers
Hi Chris,
At least at H. E. level (and ideally at all levels), Notetakers / Scribes / Educational Assistants / Educational / Study Support Workers should have no part in personal / medical care. The student's social services dept must, by law, provide personal assistants (or the funding to the student for these via the Direct Payments scheme) for these duties. The educational body, as is its area of expertise, and as this is the service which it is providing for the student, must provide educational / study support services. If educational support assistants are wrongly expected to undertake personal care duties, then you are asking for 2 totally different areas of expertise to be covered by one person, which means that, both in applicants and in actual undertaking of the work and professional development, you are seriously compromising the level of educational and study support expertise that students are able to access.
Unfortunately, in the society that we live in, status is all, and too many people still believe that personal care tasks are 'menial', unskilled work (which they are most definitely not), and that if educational support workers undertake these (and many people are still confused as to whether they do, although most H.E. institutions are thankfully not), then there is an associated implied assumption that they are not a highly qualified study support professional, but are, as the all too commonly derogatory (to the disabled person, and to a lesser degree, to their support assistant) term is used, the 'student's carer'. When it comes to communication and negotiation with academics, departmental and admin staff, if support assistants / notetakers are not perceived as being in a primarily educational role (and therefore, by implication, as 'one of us'), but as a 'care assistant' (another often derogatorily used term, which implies that they don't really work in the educational sphere of the university), then no progress can be made, especially in situations where lecturers maybe have never had a disabled student on their course before, or at least are not au fait with the modern student support systems that are finally becoming standard in universities. I have worked in situations with students and academics where lecturers' (and some fellow students') knowledge and awareness of disability is less than zero, and if all staff (and students) are aware of the fact that I am there only to assist the student with study related assistance, then this allows the student to not feel uncomfortable about having to explain, in front of the whole class sometimes (yes, some lecturers really are that insensitive), who I am (because I am not on the register), and why I am there. Most students, especially your common or garden teenage school leaver, do not want anything that is going to jeopardise them feeling that they are exactly the same as anyone else in their class- this includes students with a disability, who have enough additional man-made hurdles to get over just to get there.
Ideally, I believe that the study assistant should be, if you like, 'invisible', a sort of assistive technological aid, and that one must be extremely careful, especially with the less confident student, of acceding to any requests to communicate with university staff on their behalf, if they are able to do so themselves, as the whole experience of university is intended to be empowering, enabling, and confidence building for the student. However, this can also be, in appropriate situations, a part of the job, if the student requests it to be, or if their particular situation requires communication assistance, or if information needs to be passed to or fro the academic dept and disabled students' support office. It is then that this sort of confusion, especially where a student is acting as a 'vanguard', in a department where there is little or no previous experience of teaching disabled students, and has little or no knowledge of the university's student / disabilities support depts., can be detrimental to disabled students, to the skilled people who support them, and to the general knowledge pool within the university (especially academic depts, which can be very isolated) about how positive the experience of teaching and learning is for students with disabilities and the people who work with them- we can then get over staff's fears and misconceptions about potential difficulties. I have attended seminars / tutorials for a student where our office had send much communication to this lecturer about a student, and he had no knowledge, because he had deleted emails, not reads letters etc- in these, all to common, situations, the notetaker is then the primary contact that the lecturer has with our support services.
Ok, enough! But I felt that this was a crucial point to make, especially for the most important reason- quality of provision for students, and a least problematic, hurdle free experience for them also. I also believe that far too many institutions, both Higher and Further Education, are still confused about this, why I don't know, because the legal guidance is very clear. Most importantly, way too many of these bodies still see educational support workers as an ancillary service, when, in actual fact, especially when it comes to the students' daily experience of study and classes, the support worker is possibly the most crucial (and most regularly seen) part of their support. Get it wrong, like employing underqualified or undertrained people, or people who have not studied at H.E. for H.E. level students, or agency / casual staff, or any situation where there is lack of continuity, expertise, skill, training, commitment, reliability etc, and there can be no successful working relationship built up with students, and a much lower level of provision results- not what can genuinely be called providing quality study support, but rather, a lip service version of it.
Ok, that really is it, got it off my chest!
Best regards-
Becs Mc Donald
----- Original Message -----
From: Baxter, Chris <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 4:54 PM
Subject: Job descriptions for Notetakers
Dear all
Has anyone developed these and would be willing to share them with me or
the whole list or both?
I'd be very pleased to receive anything as we are looking at a
recruitment and selection drive in the very near future.
In the spirit of Dis Forum I'd be willing to share my final version with
any contributors
Thanks!
Chris Baxter
0115 848 6163 voice and text
0115 848 4371 fax
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/sss/disability/
This email is intended solely for the addressee. It may contain private
or confidential information. If you are not the intended addressee, you
must take no action on it nor show a copy to anyone. Please reply to
this email to highlight the error. Opinions and information in this
email which do not relate to the business of Nottingham Trent University
shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by the university.
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