Hi
The 10/11 LA Guidance still allows students to have a DSA funded 
assessment long before being offered a place.

if needs change because the student goes on to do another course, these 
can be accomodated, see

"74 ... Given that the assessment may be carried out some months before 
the start of the course, some students may subsequently attend a 
different institution or course. In such cases, a top-up assessment can 
be carried out once the student has confirmed their place on a course."

But the problem you (or needs assessors) are likely to encounter is 
getting accurate time-table information from the academic department(s) 
at such an early stage to be able to calculate the potential support 
costs e.g. for a deaf student. As a result, you may have to assess based 
on potential maximum costs based on potential maximum hours of taught 
sessions/types of taught sessions, resulting in a very scary figure at 
the end which might end up not being as high in reality.

Of course, you could do an informal in-house assessment for students 
applying to courses at your institution, and a result of this could be 
you can give finance people a rough idea of the potential costs of 
covering non-DSA-able support in the forthcoming academic year, but 
obviously you couldn't use information gained from this assessment as 
part of the decision making process as to whether the student will be 
offered a place or not.

It's a very good idea to invite any potential student with a 'complex' 
disability in as early as possible (i.e. now!) to discuss their 
potential support requirements, and doing this before they have their 
needs assessment could better inform them about the kind of issues they 
might face on the course when discussing their individual requirements 
with the assessor.

Hope this helps
Ian Francis



On 18/03/2010 11:43, Wendy Knowles (W.Knowles) wrote:
> Hi to all on the forum
>
> I am interested to find out if any institutions fund an assessment of
> study needs before a student is offered a place at their institution as
> a way of accurately identifying the full costs of non medical helpers. I
> am thinking of more complex students who have high support needs such as
> profoundly deaf students who are highly likely to require funding above
> and beyond the maximum DSA non medical helpers allowance. Does anyone
> use this means as a way of projecting for the finance department at the
> institution the additional funds that will need to be made available by
> the institution?
>
> I look forward to your thoughts
>
> Kind regards
>
> Wendy
>
> *Wendy Knowles*
>
> *Disability Advice Team Manager*
>
> *York** St John University***
>
> *[log in to unmask]*
>
> *01904 876541*
>