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
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http://www.ntu.ac.uk/sss/disability/
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-----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.
