On 12/12/11 13:59, Lesley Morrice wrote:
> Where a student has a blue badge they
> can often park for free and the blue badge route is the one that SFE and
> often the institutions expect the student to take.
What about those students who are not eligible for a blue badge who
still have genuine difficulty with walking distances between available
parking and their university spaces?
I am told that blue badge criteria vary by councily, I know of a
disabled person who has a Staffordshire blue badge (as that's where she
lives) who says Birmingham would not give them one even though they use
"close by parking" to minimise the fatigue and energy drain of walking
too far as they have MS. They are able to DO their job, but if they
have to walk more than very short distances they quickly become too
tired to do their job effectively.
At Birmingham where I work the main car parks for students are at least
250m from the nearest building and can be as much as 500m on difficult
(hilly, steps, uneven) terrain which is too much for some of our
students to manage without fatigue, pain etc. I believe blue badges
distances are about 50m which means there's a gap of "not eligible"
while simultaneously "in genuine need". Also for some students carrying
things like books is a bigger problem than their main mobility and
wrangling support workers for that is hugely complicated, expensive,
time consuming and annoying for the student and disability service in a
way that giving the student a nearby parking permit might not be.
We have taken to asking students to get a blue badge if they can (and
some of them do need nagging) or to provide us with medical evidence
stating how far they can walk without pain/discomfort etc. We will then
apply to a manager and the parking team for that student to be able to
park inside campus itself albeit not in "disabled" spaces if they don't
have a blue badge.
I am interested as disability advisors how we manage parking access in
the context of a student with "overdoing it" being a trigger for
worsening (sometimes permanent) of an impairment? Just because someone
"can" absolutely does not mean that they can do it more than once every
now and then or "should" because of considerable risk of doing oneself
permanent harm.
I'd be interested to hear how more people manage that gap between blue
badge and genuine need and whether provision is made and if students are
charged for that provision or not.
Natalya
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