I haven't explained myself properly yet again, we are talking about forms for ALL students, hundreds of them that are involved in off site activities throughout they year, including sixth form students from local schools who go on our field trips with our undergraduate students. In the past with some depts students may have been getting on the coach before they handed in their forms informing tutors of any needs. It is going to be compulsory for students to hand in fomrs well in advance of trips or they will be unable to take part. As well as knowing in advance for practical issues it is also necessary in terms of safety during the activities for the student and the rest of the group. With the students we see we discuss with them the content of their field trip, what it will entail etc and work with the student to work out an individual programme for them if necessary. An example of this would be one of our students with Multiple Sclerosis who because of fatigue would have had difficulties with all the outdoor pursuits 9 - 7 for 5 days chose her favoutite activities and the timetable was altered to enable her to do one activity a day and she was able to take part in the week long residential with her peers, another student who was meant to go on a compulsory residentail for a week, because of his personal care needs did not want to be away from Liverpool for longer than a night, he had never spent a night away from home before. He took part in 2 days of the residential, stayed for 1 night and had a support worker with him at all times.
Although it is great if the student and the College are in agreement with what the student is able to take part in I do feel that there will be times when there will be conflict.
An example is a student with uncontolled asthma, had recently had a collapsed lung and went to the Alps, altho had been told about issues of altitude, distance to a hospital etc still went and GP agreed she was ok to go. Emergency rush to hospital when there. Some of our field trips are to isolated areas where there is no phone contact, I would have thought there could be occasions altho rare before you all think I am discriminating where it would not be advisable for a someone with a serious health condition to go. I am not talking about disabled students here but students with a medical condition that could warrant emergency treatment.
Although I spend my time considering the rights of our disabled students I also need to consider our 'duty of care' to our students, the tutors who will be in charge of the group and the rest of the group.
We will be writing guidelines for all staff in charge of a fied trip and although they know to talk to all students about acccommodation, content of trip, even altitude and its effect etc in a group of say 200 1st year sport studies students they would be unable to speak to all individually and students may not always consider the relevance of the information to them which is why we need a form that will encompass everything.
Does this explain it more....
Sheila
Sheila Watts
Head of Support Service for students with disabilities
Liverpool Hope University College
Hope Park
Liverpool
L16 9JD
Tel/Minicom 0151-291-3064
e-mail [log in to unmask]
Liverpool Hope University College accepts no responsibility for this e-mail, its contents and any loss or damage arising in any way from the receipt or use of this e-mail and its attachments.
|