Subject:

EU Student Year Abroad

From:

Date:

08/12/2014 16:27

Dear Catherine and All,
I hope you do not mind me suggesting that too much care and concern can disempower people. The student is presumably managing in the UK without personal care support and presumably managed in their home country without this support. I would suggest that the issue is what accessibility barriers there are in the environment the student is going into, for instance have they been given an appropriate room. I would suggest that the duty of care should involve working with the student to provide them information on accessibility barriers and to ensure they have accommodation that is fully accessible to them, as well as putting pressure on the host institution to remove any accessibility barriers. You could also ask the student whether they mind you finding out what support and funding mechanisms to access it are available if they change their mind about personal support.
Regards
Marion

Hi all,

We have a student looking to go on a year abroad next year who uses a wheelchair.  Currently they do not have any personal care support in place and don't feel that they will need this whilst abroad.  However, concerns have been raised about the student being able to take care of themselves independently, especially whilst abroad.  The student is an EU student so is not able to access the same support as a UK student.  If it was a UK student we would raise concerns with their social worker or care agency but we don't have any network like this for the student in question.  This has been especially highlighted by the fact that the student will be studying abroad with different systems yet again.  I was wondering if anyone else had any experience with a similar situation?  Additionally, if the student does not want support, would we be able to insist that they have support and where does our duty of care come in to play?

Any thoughts welcome!

Thanks,
Catherine

Catherine Perrett
Disability Caseworker/Gweithiwr Achos Anabledd