Loan danger - students on the breadline

Re-organisation of the system which processes additional funding vital to study appears to have left it, and the disabled students who rely on it, close to crisis. Cathy Reay reports

The joys of being a student: beans on toast, sneaking onto the bus without paying, working overtime in KFC for the weekend’s beer money. The average student has to make every penny of their loan last just to make it through to the end of the week. For most it just means another day of beans on toast. But for disabled students it’s a very different story.

Without necessary financial support disabled students can fall behind, or worse, be forced to drop out. So far this year only one in five disabled students has received the funding they need to pay for specialist equipment and assistance that is vital to their studies, according to a recent Government survey. That funding pays for notetakers and interpreters in class, specialist computer hardware and software, additional stationery, essential books; expensive equipment and support that is completely necessary for students with disabilities to study and learn
in an equal environment to their peers. The responsibility of dishing out Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) previously ran through local authorities according to where the student was from. However, this year the responsibility of tackling first years’ DSA has been folded into one main body: the Student Loans Company (SLC). A company that, at the time of writing, are £43 million down on lending compared to last year. A company that has, a third of the way through the school year, left over 12,000 disabled first year students across the UK still waiting for help.

Suzie Wilkins, a student at Sussex University, has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which affects joint mobility and flexibility and means she has difficulty carrying heavy items like books or a computer. She currently has to use her own money for extra printing and photocopying because she still hasn’t received her DLA. “It’s a constant cause of worry in the back of my mind. How long will this go on for? Am I going to be reimbursed for the money I’m spending on this? It all mounts up; the more I use of next year’s funds, which is what I’m doing right now, the more I worry I won’t ever get it back.”

Suzie has been told that, like everyone else that applies for DSA, she has to have an assessment so her needs can be determined. But her nearest assessment centre is a two hour train journey away which, because of her condition, is almost impossible for her to take. It’s unlikely that she will receive her allowance before the new year.

Unfortunately, Suzie isn’t the only one waiting in line. Karim, a dyspraxic student at Nottingham University, is still waiting for both his DSA and his student loan. “I applied for my student loan last February and still haven’t got it! The banks are very generous with their interest-free overdrafts but it only really covers my rent, so all my books are borrowed. I have to get books one day at a time at my university library, and I obviously can’t write in them. I need to be able to write in and keep my books, I don’t learn any other way, and without my student funding I just can’t do that.”

Karim says that during the complicated process of applying for a loan the SLC has lost copies of his birth certificate twice, even though he sent them recorded delivery. Abdul Munim Kamali, a dyslexic student at Westminster, has had similar problems: “After I sent off my first diagnostic assessment it got ‘lost in the post’, according to the SLC. The second one got there fine but was branded invalid because an educational psychologist didn’t carry it out. I eventually had to shell out £350-£400 of my own money for an assessment, which my university will supposedly reimburse me for. After that I’ll get my dyslexia ‘diagnosis’ and be able to apply for an allowance. The entire process is so long.”

Whether set back by the system’s delays, complicated procedure or unreliability, many disabled students share the same view: the SLC simply cannot cope with the volume of applications it has received.

A disabled prospective student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that while working in his local MP’s office at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year he dealt with numerous complaints from students who couldn’t get through to the SLC.

“People would call us and say their new department was understaffed, phones were going unanswered; we had a caseworker in our office who, at one point, tried to get through to the student loans enquiries board and was kept on hold for four hours.”

“I spent seven hours on the phone in one sitting trying to get through to a department that was supposedly processing my form,” says C Bear Deacon, a Salford University postgraduate who has chronic fatigue and cognitive impairments, who has been waiting for a reply from the SLC for months. She’s not asking for the money, she just wants an acknowledgement.

“All I want is someone to process my form. When I eventually get through I get responses like ‘oh it’s in place a/b/c/d who are two/three/four months behind’. There’s this huge brick wall: you put a form in, it disappears into the ether and there’s no way of finding out where it is.”
Warwick University student Stephanie Taylor, who has dyslexia, said that “running late” was a common excuse the SLC used: “I had to keep ringing up to make sure they got my documents okay; it took over a month more than it should have done, which they attributed to ‘running late’. Well ‘running late’ meant that I had to start university without the equipment I needed and even though I have it now, I’m still behind with my reading.”

Meanwhile Katie Butcher, a deaf student at Kent University, doesn’t understand why, in the absence of her allowance, she can’t recharge the SLC for her equipment. “I applied for DSA in April and I still don’t have it. I’ve got a notetaker, which is good, but I don’t have a dictaphone or anything else yet that has been promised. I’m putting myself in university so I’m really dependent on this money; why can’t I just go and buy a dictaphone or a laptop and send them my receipt? Apparently my laptop has been delayed because they are awaiting some software, but if they would just let me buy what I need then I wouldn’t have to wait.”

For many, though, the frustrating wait continues and, thanks to what many attribute to the SLC’s lesser expertise in deciding how to dish the dough, some students are being turned down for the allowance. “The SLC is turning down medical evidence at a much higher rate than local authorities ever did,” says Amanda Kent, a disabled DSA needs assessor. “It simply doesn’t have the knowledge and understanding of medical evidence needed [to process a claim].”

Amanda told Disability Now that students have been diagnosed on the phone in some cases by SLC helpline staff who are completely unqualified to determine a student’s needs.

“Disabled students are in an environment now where their applications have become so clogged up in the system that people don’t know whether to keep themselves in education or get them out. It’s like asking non-disabled students to write and then taking away their pens,” she added.

Adam Hyland, the NUS’s disabled students’ officer, said that it is “disgusting” that large numbers of disabled students are still awaiting their DSA: ”Without this support in place, disabled students cannot access their education and reach their academic potential.”

When asked to comment on the situation the SLC simply said they were sorry for continuing delays and are doing everything they can. Meanwhile, disabled students across the country face the prospect of end of term exams, coursework and papers they might not be able to complete to their usual standard because of what they see as an ineffective, irresponsible and discriminatory system of support.