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Dear Colleagues You may know that HEFCE has asked HEIs to produce plans about how they intend to widen participation to under-represented groups (HEFCE circular 99/33; deadline for return of "initial statement" is Oct 1 1999 ). The same circular also invites bids for a variety of funds - for regional partnerships, joint work on Life-Long Learning partnerships with FE colleges - and gives brief information on the new disability funding programme and a special Millemium Summer School programme (this last initiative will run in the summer of 2000). The thinking behind these funding programmes, how they all fit together and how they fit with the new disability funding programme, is best captured in an earlier HEFCE circular 99/24. As a team we are working with HEFCE officers to encourage central policy makers and institutions to remember that disability issues should be brought under the general umbrella of widening participation - and that disabled students are just as much an underrepresented groups as students from lower socio-economic or minority ethnic groups. You might like to take action to ensure that disability issues are included within more general thinking on widening participation in your institution by, for example, - getting informed about the wider context by reading HEFCE circulars 99/33 and 99/24 (available on the HEFCE web site - HEFCE publications) - identifying and then making contact with staff in your institution who are leading on the widening participation issue - if time is still available this year, considering with those staff how disabled student issues can be included in your institution's initial statement on widening participation and, if possible, associated funding bids If the initial statement and the funding bids have already been finalised,it is still worth developing ideas with those same staff about how disability issues can be included in future similar bids/ documents prepared regularly for HEFCE e.g. the annual operating statement which will be the monitoring mechanism for HEFCE to check that progress is being made on the widening participation front. Between September and December 1999 the eQuip team will issue more information/advice about the widening participation funding programme as it develops.We do realise how busy everyone has been in June and July and appreciate, too, that the time to open up these kind of discussions is not always readily available. But it could be well worth prioritising some time for this (if not now, then later in the first session this coming academic year). Best wishes Mike Adams, Liz Sutherland and Rosemary Turner - eQuip team Liz Sutherland [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%