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Help. Need Advice please.

max

Hi


I'm mailing on behalf of my son, who is a first year undergraduate student at University. He has a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome, dyslexia and dyspraxia and receives DLA and DSA. He is aware of this mail.

The academic support from the University itself has been very good - better than experiences with schools had led us to expect. He has a 2 support workers, a named contact in student wellbeing, support software (recording equipment for lectures etc) and his College (the Business School) has been generally supportive. He is enjoying his studies and even regularly attends several student societies.

The only serious problem he has is with his accommodation, provided by private student accommodation suppliers who provide a large accommodation complex next door to the Business School. They placed him a student flat with 5 other students and facing towards the Central Courtyard.

They were informed at least twice in writing and at least twice during phone calls about my son’s condition before he signed their contract. They have failed to make any adjustments to allow him to fully access the services provided - even ignoring his stated preferences for a smaller flat (max. 3 other students) and a room facing away from the central courtyard (as he is very sensitive to ambient noise). We have subsequently found out that he is not the first Aspergers student to have problems at the current accommodation. They haven't anticipated or implemented any adjustments to help students with my son’s disabilities.

For example, even though there were locks fitted to the 6 kitchen cupboards they didn't issue keys and when the other students "took his cupboard, fridge and freezer space" his condition meant that he wouldn't 'stand up for himself' and ended up trying to store his kitchen equipment and food in half the cupboard under the sink and with no space in the fridge/freezer (except the ice cube tray). When his flatmates told him to 'be quiet' (we overheard one of them knocking on his door telling him to be quiet when he was simply making a phone call to us at about 10pm) he started whispering in his room at all times.

These along with other similar incidents have led to tension with his flatmates resulting in him refusing to use the kitchen, flush his toilet or interact with the others in his flat. There is now no chance of re-integrating him into his current accommodation.

His support worker has approached his current accommodation to see if there is a possibility of moving within the accommodation but they have said there is not. The University Accommodation office has found him a studio flat that he could move to but it is with a different accommodation provider. He has been told that his current accommodation provider will hold him to his contract and that he can only move if he re-lets his current accommodation otherwise he will be liable for rent on both rooms.

Does he have grounds to cancel/leave his contract with his current accommodation provider and how would he need to go about it?

Without moving we are sure he will give up his course and leave the University. He intends to hand back his keys on 18th December (when the current term ends). He won't return to the flat after that (and there seems to be very little we can do to change his mind).

If he has his alternative accommodation in place by or near the start of term in January, he will go back (we can help him commute from home in the short term only - we live in a rural location approx. 35 miles from the University with very poor public transport links). This gives us a potential timeframe to the end of January to sort the accommodation. If there's a realistic chance of getting the contract cancelled we would advise him to default on the January payment of his current accommodation provider contract and take the studio flat.

Could you please advise us/him on what we should do?

Parents

  • Student accommodation contracts aere real contracts - they aren't easy to walk away from. This is a long standing problem where there is incompatibility between sharers of any kind. Some contracts allow you to find a replacement to take over the rent, but not all.

    The problem with accomodation is universal even in universities with good disability support, the support tends to be legally worded as academic, and may specifically exclude social support. And accommodation unfortunately counts as social. It is especially difficult, where increasingly nowadays, it is private sector provision. There seems to be little grasp of the Equality Act (as especially manifest where overseas students are accommodated together - as if they'd rather be with "their own kind" than mixed in with the general student population - some universities put all disabled students in one building), let alone disability, and as you can expect, especially not autism.

    However, given you discussed this need in advance, so they took on responsibility and have duties under the Equiality Act - just getting through the legal process is the problem.

    Courtyard buildings are a known problem, so why do they keep building them? Well it gets more rooms. But they do reverberate any noise, including the perennial jokers who put their super hi fi on the windowsill and share their foul musical tastes with everyone else.

    I've known one case where a student with autism was put in a flat of girls, where it was supposed they'd be calmer than boys - which of course was far from the case.

    Student accommodation for students on the spectrum is a constant problem, and can, as in this case seemingly, be the ruination of a course of study.

    The NAS web pages on Higher Education,  "Education, Meeting the needs of students in FE and HE", does briefly mention "making specific accommodation arrangements" under Practical and Pastoral Support. But the problem is few universities translate that into real accommodation support, and as I indicated above, their interpretation of the Equality Act doesn't seem to extend outside the teaching environment. 

    Even in campus halls, cleaners and janitorial staff, residential tutors and wardens aren't necessarily included in staff training for disability awareness - even less likely in private sector accommodation, despite increasing use of this to provide student flats. You would think that would be obvious, but no it isn't (in some universities note takers aren't eligible to attend courses on disability unless they go in their own time and pay for the courses themselves). There just seem to be universal blind spots.

    Given this is so often a make or break point for people on the spectrum attending university, nothing ever gets done. And NAS sadly seems oblivious, despite my repeated attempts to point out that their web pages are at least ten years out of date, and don't adequately address what is happening.

    The problems encountered by Max's son are so common, yet the answers remain difficult. You may have to pay the rent to the end of the contract even if he no longer stays there. You may still have to pay a share of breakages (believe it or not). There isn't any come back usually against bad behaviour by flatmates. The whole system of student accommodation as regards disability is a rotten mess, but if organisations like NAS remain indifferent and oblivious there is little hope of any improvement.

Reply

  • Student accommodation contracts aere real contracts - they aren't easy to walk away from. This is a long standing problem where there is incompatibility between sharers of any kind. Some contracts allow you to find a replacement to take over the rent, but not all.

    The problem with accomodation is universal even in universities with good disability support, the support tends to be legally worded as academic, and may specifically exclude social support. And accommodation unfortunately counts as social. It is especially difficult, where increasingly nowadays, it is private sector provision. There seems to be little grasp of the Equality Act (as especially manifest where overseas students are accommodated together - as if they'd rather be with "their own kind" than mixed in with the general student population - some universities put all disabled students in one building), let alone disability, and as you can expect, especially not autism.

    However, given you discussed this need in advance, so they took on responsibility and have duties under the Equiality Act - just getting through the legal process is the problem.

    Courtyard buildings are a known problem, so why do they keep building them? Well it gets more rooms. But they do reverberate any noise, including the perennial jokers who put their super hi fi on the windowsill and share their foul musical tastes with everyone else.

    I've known one case where a student with autism was put in a flat of girls, where it was supposed they'd be calmer than boys - which of course was far from the case.

    Student accommodation for students on the spectrum is a constant problem, and can, as in this case seemingly, be the ruination of a course of study.

    The NAS web pages on Higher Education,  "Education, Meeting the needs of students in FE and HE", does briefly mention "making specific accommodation arrangements" under Practical and Pastoral Support. But the problem is few universities translate that into real accommodation support, and as I indicated above, their interpretation of the Equality Act doesn't seem to extend outside the teaching environment. 

    Even in campus halls, cleaners and janitorial staff, residential tutors and wardens aren't necessarily included in staff training for disability awareness - even less likely in private sector accommodation, despite increasing use of this to provide student flats. You would think that would be obvious, but no it isn't (in some universities note takers aren't eligible to attend courses on disability unless they go in their own time and pay for the courses themselves). There just seem to be universal blind spots.

    Given this is so often a make or break point for people on the spectrum attending university, nothing ever gets done. And NAS sadly seems oblivious, despite my repeated attempts to point out that their web pages are at least ten years out of date, and don't adequately address what is happening.

    The problems encountered by Max's son are so common, yet the answers remain difficult. You may have to pay the rent to the end of the contract even if he no longer stays there. You may still have to pay a share of breakages (believe it or not). There isn't any come back usually against bad behaviour by flatmates. The whole system of student accommodation as regards disability is a rotten mess, but if organisations like NAS remain indifferent and oblivious there is little hope of any improvement.

Children
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