Dr. Frances O'Connell:

My colleagues and I make our returns to the HEA. There is even an issue about the calendar year versus the academic year. When we get our fund for students with disabilities, we are trying to plan in a way that is not strategic. It is based on what we have, the number of students and who we are looking after. With regard to how the moneys can be expended, and this is not meant in any way to be discriminatory, the amount of money we would spend on hearing supports and an assistant for one student who presents to us as deaf to can eat a huge amount of the fund. The team is constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul and being highly effective with the moneys that we have. We spend a lot of our time writing reports to say that as public servants we have adequately spent the money.

I was a civil servant many decades ago, so I know how this works. However, if we are to be fair to the system and if we are to adequately support those people who are now presenting as neurodiverse in higher education, we need to back that.