These are the notes I made, within the 1st Disabled Students Network that I held as Disabled Students Representative on October 16th 2017. The Network is part of my remit to represent all disabled students and thus enable change to be made over a good period of time.

1. Kashmire DS Hawker Disabled Students Representative
Meeting 1 - October 16th
2017 - Coffee Union
 Attended by Matt Lowe - Senior Disability Adviser from Disabled Students Support
Service
 Inductions for 2017/18 changed - split into several areas including AS/Deaf Students
combined, Disability Drop in and AS Pizza Lunch
 1316 new students for 2017/18 - sizeable increase on 2016/17 - Students with
Mental Health issues more than doubled
 Awareness and promotion campaign about to be launched across SHU
 Study Skills Support and Assistive Study Support training
 Facility Briefing for 1st years to be held - dates and details can be issued via email
SHU Fresher's - Feedback
 "Didn't know that events were taking place across at the Hubs - followed timetable
and this didn't know that Welcome Week events happened"
 "Events advertised weren't running!"
 "Came to the Hubs and is inaccessible - automatically denies Disabled folk to coming
to place"
 "Union has been stagnant accessibility wise - being excluded is not cool!"
 "Education is needed for Disabled awareness - connection with Elected Reps/Officers
is key & the place is not accessible"
 "Didn't come to any events here - couldn't face becoming very anxious"
 "Find hard to process the emails and information which comes through - struggling
to know where the support is"
 "DSS trying different way to engagement with students"
 "What's on offer is not integrated and not easily available"
 "A lot of students give up along the way!"
 "Red Tape gets in the way of getting support organised"
 "Can't say everything we need within a 30 second video - all DSS allotted isn't good
enough"

2. Kashmire DS Hawker Disabled Students Representative
 "General Communication between all areas is frustrating"
 "Costs and fees delay getting things sorted quickly"
 "Lacking a strong student voice"
 "Financial difficulties makes people drop out - no support with it and Lecturers being
a massive hindrance"
 "Some terrible attitudes towards students and individual cases"
 "No best practices shared within facilities"
What to do about it?
 HallamUnion Council Policy on Education & People, Demand in engagement and
Accessibility and rally around better stuff - need to be build hope for other Students
 Separate Policy to come on Disabled Representation
 Use of Owen Building and HOTC for Welcome Week Events
 More sessions like a DSN to help know where and what things are there for them
 A Disabled Students customised SHU Fresher's Programme, around the academic
side of things, with an element of HallamUnion & Community within it
 Meet and Greet for Students and Staff within each facility
 Integrate Support Service awareness into Induction Structure
 Use the messages we get now to help planning for 2018/19 Induction from Feb
 Further awareness, through compulsory training is possible
 Online training with Staff
Have a look at Sheffield Disability Research Forum