Published on 12, July, 2020
My 19yo is in their 2nd year at Cambridge, or I should say was at Cambridge as they were forced to leave a couple of weeks ago. They are so upset. They were told they should have asked for more help but their ASD makes reaching out to strangers for help almost impossible. My child is quite depressed now they are back at home and it’s really difficult trying to support them. Part of me wants to get legal advice as I don’t think the Uni have dealt with this situation well but part of me wants to just help my child to move on and try to start again elsewhere. Does anyone know where I could get advice on what the University’s obligations are towards their ASD students?
NAS92890 said:They were told they should have asked for more help but their ASD makes reaching out to strangers for help almost impossible.
First question - does the person in question in question have a diagnosis of autism? If so, was it diagnosed on their application to uni?
If it is no to both then they are not going to have a leg to stand on as they were not identified as being disabled and hence no special treatment would have been expected.
If the uni did know then I would ask them to supply their guidelines on the support offered to autistic students and find where they failed to supply this.
Lastly I would ask for a detailed note on why they forced you child out. It is possible there is some other situation that you may not have been made aware of which may not be related to the autism (eg getting into a fight). I'm not saying this is the case but I have seen a lot of cases of people trying to use their autism as an excuse for plain bad behaviour and it would be wise to rule this out.
Once you have a reasonable understanding of what has actually happened then you can made a more informed decision on whether to get litigious about it.
In the meantime I would consider getting your child into seeing a therapist to work on their issues - just make sure the therapist has experience of working with autistic patients. This should give your child a safe space to work through whatever is going on and hopefully guide them to resolving the issues and building their life in the post education world.
Iain said:Lastly I would ask for a detailed note on why they forced you child out. It is possible there is some other situation that you may not have been made aware of which may not be related to the autism (eg getting into a fight). I'm not saying this is the case but I have seen a lot of cases of people trying to use their autism as an excuse for plain bad behaviour and it would be wise to rule this out.
A valid excuse in some situations as well though. I'm readding between the lines but I think this is more likely a disaplinory not a fitness to study situation. The fact they've sugested he leaves before he is pushed sugests to me they think on some level the issue arose out of miscomunication or some other autism related issue, not malice.
It's also likely to undermine their argument if they try to defende a section 15 (discrimination arising from disability) tort. Basicly if you are saying this student could sucessfully do a course at another uni if resonable adjustments were made it undermines your desision to kick him out at your university for something caused by his autism (even if it was a disaplinory infraction). That's some what hypothetical / speculative though. After all we don't know the details of this case.
But the thing everyone gets wrong about section 15 is justification speaks to the future not the past. you can't say 'I don't care if it happened because he's disableled, what he did was really bad.' but you can say 'even if it happened because he was disabeled we can't stop it from happening again if he stays.'