There is perhaps a problem that flows from consistent references to the three areas of likely eligibility for DSA as being: long term health conditions; mental health conditions; specific learning difficulty. And that this starts right at the top of things e.g. https://www.gov.uk/disabled-students-allowances-dsas/eligibility
Flowing from this, there is then something of a failure to account for the full range of NDD in the documents, assessment processes and financial arrangements relating to the DSA (with some universities saying they will pay for diagnostic assessments of only some NDD).
A key problem is that ‘Specific Learning Difficulty’ is an ill-defined term for things like dyslexia, which are themselves then defined very inconsistently – and represent only a subset of clinically-recognised NDD: a Specific Learning Disorder is correctly one type of NDD whereas a Specific Learning Difficulty could mean anything really and frequently does. In particular, a difficulty may or may not constitute an EA disability whereas a disorder essentially always does due to the similarity in the criteria.
These are not simply issues of terminology: rather, they relate to the approach that is taken to the issue of equality for students with psychological issues that might constitute a disability. It seems that the way in which NDD are framed and approached within the DSA is highly skewed, with several resulting problems:
- A broad range of issues are often shoehorned into ‘dyslexia’ even though they are distinct, co-morbid issues
- Students with a ‘dyslexia’ or other SpLD diagnosis are then given support that might relate to only some of the issues they are experiencing
- Students with neurodevelopmental problems that clearly are not dyslexia would seem to be rather overlooked in terms of diagnosis and support – autism perhaps being the main example
These issues are not particular to universities and just rather bedevil the assessment and support systems for people with neurodevelopmental disorders in general – but they do seem to be highly (and perhaps unnecessarily) entrenched in the implementation of the DSA.
And the conflation of SpLD with NDD, with the resulting omission of non-SpLD NDD, is evident in almost everything that students and others might read about DSA.
Read more about the issues relating to diagnosis and disability
