Social Care Needs Assessment for University

Hi Luan

My son is a wheelchair user and is on his 2nd year of university in another city. When he lived at home we ( me and his Dad) met all his care needs. He has a social care assessment for his care needs before attending uni and they asked him questions about the kind of help he would need if he lived independently. They allocated him a budget for that. We then had to find someone to support him for those hours and tasks.

I am happy to share our experience and have started to write it up as a blog as there was so little info out there when we started the process also you might find someone in your social services who has helped other students ( we didn’t in ours) who knows how it works and can advise, it’s worth asking, plus this organisation advise students studying in England ( couldn’t help us as my son studies in Wales): https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/disabled-students-helpline

Sorry there must be a word limit, I will do it in several sections:

Once you’ve found your chosen courses and universities, use their websites to find out contact details for: course leaders, student accommodation and student services (they will have a section for disabled students). 

My son also used info such as distance from home, transport links and google maps to look at the local area to help him decide on his first choice. His first choice uni DIDN’T have its own halls which meant we had to find privately owned wheelchair accessible accommodation which made the process of finding suitable accommodation longer.

At the same time as you’re contacting the universities, contact your local adult social services and request a care needs assessment as you will be going to Uni, a social worker will arrange a visit and ask what support you will need at Uni. They will allocate direct payments for this support (you can have a managed account that involves just ringing/emailing in hours) -my son gets help for washing clothes, making food, getting shopping. If your social services are like ours here, you might need to be persistent to make sure that you get to speak to them early enough to then find people to employ for your Uni start date. Then when you know which is likely to be your first choice uni, contact the social services in that town/city and ask how you go about advertising for the support you need. We didn’t have anyone apply for my son’s advert (he was advertising for 12 hours per week) and ended up relying on someone we knew in the city asking around. I suppose you could use the job centre and local papers too.

Other things useful to know:

All the above took quite some time, so start as early as you can. 

If the Uni you prefer doesn’t have its own accommodation, private halls do often have accessible accommodation. We had to look a bit further away for a suitable halls but the taxi my son gets helps with this. My son’s accommodation was owned by Prime now Mezzino and is really good and reduced the cost of his room and shared the cost of fitting push button automatic doors with the Uni to make getting into his room easier. But Unite who owned several halls near the uni were misleading and unhelpful. I would advise visiting any of the accommodation that claims to be accessible good and early to check it meets your needs.

Happy to answer my questions or help in any way. My son says going to university was one of the best things he did!

best wishes Lizzy 

Here's a word doc in case.

You're welcome and good luck with it all

Lizzy (: