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IN TOUCH – Improvements to the Disabled Students' Allowance

TX:Ìý 23.04.2024Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Hello.Ìý For many years now we’ve heard consistent complaints about the Disabled Students’ Allowance or DSA.Ìý That’s a fund which is supposed to help get specialised equipment and personal support to students at university.Ìý Complaints have included getting equipment late – quite often when the course is already well underway – also, complicated bureaucracy when you apply to establish eligibility and dealing with people who don’t always seem to understand the nature of your disability and your needs.

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Well now, the student loans company, which administers the Disabled Student Allowance, says it’s made changes which it believes will solve these problems.Ìý In a moment, we’re going to be hearing from the person in charge of the DSA programme about these changes.Ìý But first, I’ve been hearing from a couple of students who’ve experienced problems recently.Ìý

Sharl Roberts is in his first year studying to be a rehab officer with visually impaired people at Birmingham City University.

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Roberts

My story starts basically in August of last year when I received my DSA approval letter.Ìý I then spent three weeks trying to find an assessor that would be willing to do a visual impairment assessment.Ìý Following that, my order was placed in November, to which I received most of my kit at the end of November.Ìý I asked for the kits to be installed and I’m still waiting, that is four months?

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White

And I gather also you felt it wasn’t all either the right equipment or that it was all necessary?

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Roberts

Yes.Ìý The laptop was way underpowered and I feel the equipment – I had everything thrown at me, including the kitchen sink – I feel it was more of a tick box rather than the bespoke care that we, as VI people, need.

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White

Okay, so, a lot of problems over this academic year.Ìý What effect has all this had on your student experience?

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Roberts

Well, it’s been quite demeaning and negative really.Ìý My first assignment was due at the start of December.Ìý Not receiving my kit till… well most of my kit till the end of November I had to put in for mitigating circumstances because understandably I couldn’t fulfil the criteria.Ìý Which made me feel quite low, to be honest.Ìý I just felt almost kept back and not being able to reach my full potential because I wasn’t capable of doing what was needed of me.

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White

Right.Ìý Let me move to Alica, Alica Raymond, Alica is in her second year at Brunel University, studying creative writing.Ìý What sort of help did you need Alica and what were the problems in getting it?

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Raymond

It was again needing access to assistive technology, so getting a Mac laptop, a braille display which would then go and connect with that laptop.Ìý I feel like there is a lot of justification that’s needed – well, why do you need this piece of equipment, what can’t you do with X piece of equipment that you need this piece of equipment for – and it’s like how do you try and explain that to somebody who doesn’t use that piece of equipment at all?

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White

I mean, presumably, you do understand why with public money involved they have to check that somebody is genuinely eligible?

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Raymond

Yes, I totally understand that but, of course, when you lack a piece of equipment it lacks your performance.Ìý Like I use a Braille Note Touch Plus to do most of my reading because it’s more accessible than perhaps on my computer.

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White

And I gather another thing for you was you didn’t always feel that the human support that you’d asked for was what you would have wished?

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Raymond

Yeah, so, part of my DSA report involved me having access to a SSPVI, which is a specialist professional for vision impairment…

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White

Which is like a teacher basically.

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Raymond

Yes, so, like a qualified teacher for visual impairment. I was put through an agency to be able to get that support but with the agency and the professionals combined, the support I was getting was not productive and wasn’t efficient, which is where I had to go back to my DSA assessor and say things are not working out and I need a new provider and I need a new professional.Ìý I think it’s going through too many people.Ìý You call up the agency and say – hey, this is not working – agency say, you’ve got to contact your needs assessor.Ìý The needs assessor then contacts you, you tell them what’s up, the needs assessor then goes back to the agency.Ìý There’s a lot of back and forth that’s not necessary.Ìý And then that also creates communication barriers.

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White

Alica and Sharl, do stay there.Ìý I want to go to David Thompson, who is Head of the Disabled Student Allowance, the DSA, programme with the student loans company.Ìý David, you’ve heard those stories, tell me about the changes that you are now making and, if you can, how these might have affected and helped Sharl and Alica.

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Thompson

I’d like to start by apologising to Sharl and Alica about the experiences that they had.Ìý They certainly aren’t the experiences we intend to provide for students.Ìý The model, up until the end of February, for delivery of DSA relies on a fairly complex network of inter-connected and independent suppliers.Ìý A different supplier doing needs assessments, a different supplier providing equipment, somebody else providing non-medical help type support, as Alica was describing.Ìý The nature of that complicated network of suppliers leads to many of the issues that they’ve both experienced.Ìý The new model has effectively stripped that back and we have two organisations providing support across the UK for students – Study Tech and Capita.Ìý And the way that that makes a huge change is that rather than SLC confirming a student is eligible for DSA and then effectively passing control back to the student themselves to arrange for their needs assessment to take place, to arrange for their equipment to be sent to them and installed and then the training to take place and so on, instead these suppliers are required by our new contractual arrangements to own that end-to-end experience and ensure that they proactively take the customer through that experience and they don’t suffer these difficulties and complexities.

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White

So, just to make it absolutely clear, somebody will now pretty much have one contact through the process?

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Thompson

Yeah, they will deal with one organisation only, they will carry out the needs assessment and then that same supplier will then provide the equipment and the training associated with that.Ìý And the time taken to process DSA applications, again, driven, in part, by the large number of organisations involved, is something that we’re targeting to reduce, we’re hoping to reduce it by at least 30% from the current level, if not more.Ìý It’s important to stress that they still apply to the student loan company, through Student Finance England, for example in England, and we confirm eligibility but from that point forward the supplier takes care of all the provision.

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Roberts

The only issue I personally have now is if I have an issue who do I contact because no longer is my provider in charge and no longer is my assessor in charge?

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White

Right, so you mean having applied under the old system, what do you do now.Ìý Let me just go back to David on that one.

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Thompson

Anybody who applied under the old system would still contact the original provider of their equipment and training.Ìý If that provider is unable to support them, then they should contact the SLC and we will look to assign to one of the new suppliers.

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White

So, what about Alica’s point about the kind of rather long complicated drawn-out amount of what bureaucracy you had to fill in to show that you actually were eligible?

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Thompson

I was particularly disappointed by Alica’s description of that, when she mentioned that she felt she had to argue to get the required equipment, that is not the intent.Ìý In the new model, because the needs assessments are being conducted by suppliers directly under contract with SLC we have quality standards and customer satisfaction standards that they have to adhere to and that are directly managed by a dedicated supplier management team.

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White

So, students who are now applying, say, for next year, they will operate under this new system?

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Thompson

Absolutely, yes, anybody applying since the 26th February would be under this new system.

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White

David Thompson, Sharl Roberts, Alica Raymond, thank you all very much indeed.

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Well, listening to that has been Lucy Merritt, who’s the Education Policy Manager at the Thomas Pocklington Trust.Ìý

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Lucy, Pocklington has been in contact with the student loans company about this for some time now.Ìý What are your impressions of these changes, will they do the job?

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Merritt

So, overall, we’re really supportive of the reforms because something had to change.Ìý We particularly welcome the focus on quality on accountability within the reforms, that simply wasn’t a possibility under the old system.Ìý The test, of course, will be how seriously any slippage is taken by the student loans company and the suppliers and we’ll be watching that closely.

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White

Now one of the advantages that David Thompson cites is the student having only one organisation to deal with throughout but I suppose a counter to that could be that if you’re not happy with the performance of that one organisation your choice of who else to deal with is somewhat limited, is that a concern of yours?

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Merritt

Yeah, absolutely, and it’s too early to comment on the quality of provision by either of the two suppliers.Ìý But there is a risk that we move to a system where there’s a different quality of provision and again, that comes back to the new quality processes in place that the student loans company have set up.Ìý And we’d hope that that will be effective and will help to bring both of those suppliers in line and to ensure there is a consistency.

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White

And I know you’re particularly concerned, and Alica talked about this, about non-medical support for students and there is a call for evidence process going on about this by the Department of Education, I mean what are your concerns about non-medical support and what are the details of this call for evidence, what will it be looking at?

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Merritt

Yeah, so non-medical help for people with a visual impairment might be specialist visual impairment, note taker, sighted guidance and those kinds of things.Ìý This sits outside of the scope of the current reforms to DSA.Ìý But we do have some concerns about the call for evidence.Ìý There’s a proposal to remove the individual allocation of funding, which currently goes to a student with a funding pot for a university, for them to deliver non-medical help for their whole student body.Ìý There’s a risk within that that universities would struggle to be able to deliver that very specialist support.Ìý Already, there’s struggles to make sure things like learning support plans are in place for students, to give an additional responsibility to universities without the universities being able to do that planning as to who those students are and what support they’ll need to deliver, does definitely come with risk.Ìý So, at the moment, what we’re doing is working to gather some evidence around that.Ìý So, we want to make sure that the Department for Education have got the information that they need to ensure that what they then do as a result, this call for evidence, actually does improve the system.

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White

And the Department of Education, they say, at this stage, we’re simply seeking views on the high-level question of whether we should adapt the non-medical help system to take into account developments over recent years including new technologies.Ìý The responses from this call for evidence will help us to consider ways to address any supply shortages.Ìý May this mean replacing people, personal help, with technology?

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Merritt

There’s no questioning how transformative technology can be for blind and partially sighted people but that cannot be a replacement for their non-medical help, particularly some of those roles in helping support advocacy, for example, or that sighted guidance.Ìý But, of course, the aim, the aim within DSA and any kind of support like this, is to encourage and enable people, to become as independent as possible and technology has a huge role to play within that.Ìý If there is a factor of using technology as part of the support for the student then they need to be ready to be able to use that at university, which means having support earlier on in their education and that’s not always happening at the moment.

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White

Lucy Merritt, of Thomas Pocklington Trust, thank you very much indeed.

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Now there are just a few days to go before local elections and indeed some mayoral elections as well and a reminder that people now will need photo ID to vote and if you don’t have it, you do still have nearly 24 hours to do something about that.Ìý You can apply for a free voter authority certificate online or if you need help you can call the Electoral Commission helpline on 0800 328 0280, that’s 0800 328 0820.

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That’s all for now.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio manager Kelly Young, goodbye.