At the University of Brighton, we have set up our own DSA pool of of money
for these students funded from the bid to the Health Authority to run the
course. When an institution bids for funding from they also include costs
for admin and welfare. I argued successfully to the authorities at this
institution that money within the bid would also have been for students with
disabilities including dyslexia.
Although higher education is excluded from the DDA, your institutions own
disability statement hopefully shows an intent to assist all students with a
disability. you could use this to argue a case for a DSA type fund to be set
up for PRDN students. It is especially poignant given the difficulty in
attracting people to nursing and then keeping them on course.
A word of warning. Many nursing tutors do not believe that a student with
dyslexia or dyscalcula should be doing the course. Their arguement always
starts along the lines patients lives may be at risk....blah blah. So you'll
have to overcome this arguement as well in order to secure funding from your
institution. Fortunately at Brighton the Head of School was open to
persuasion and quite supportive once the situation was explained.
James Nicholson
Senior Welfare Officer
University of Brighton
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Debbie Gibberd [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 03 November 1998 16:22
> To: David J Wright; [log in to unmask]; Skill
> Subject: Re: Project 2000 and DSA for NHS funded students
>
> Incorporating Barts School of Nursing, the School of Radiography
> and Speech Therapists in training in main University Dept
> Clinical Communication, we are seeing increasingly large
> numbers of students for whom the support funding is hard to get,
> and in some cases non-existant.
>
> The whole "who gets NHS-DSA equivalent
> , and who doesn't" is really starting to get to me. I will speak
> to Sophie Corlett at SKILL about taking this forward, but I
> wondered, David Wright in particular if you know who is who at
> the Policy level in the Department of Health concerned with
> Nurse training. This is an equality issue and I am happy to get
> in touch with the relevant people and try to convince them of
> the injustice of students being taught together who are
> eligible/ineligible for contribution to their support costs
> because of their eventual qualification.
>
> As has been said before, if the NHS bursary were a salary, and
> the students paid taxes and NI then they could claim through
> PACT.
>
> Debbie Gibberd
> City University Disability Officer
> Northampton Square, London EC1V0HB
>
> 0171 477 8806 voice and minicom
> 0171 477 8592 fax
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