The Cost of Disability and the Mountain of Never-Ending Paperwork

Mel Kennedy

You can’t see my desk right now, but if you could, you’d see a pile of haphazard sociology and disability studies books in one corner, medication beside those, a million notebooks filled with notes…and on the opposite side of my laptop, Mount Disability Paperwork resting on top of my printer.

One lot is my transcripts, already scanned in and handed over to my postgraduate university without much fuss. The other is the paperwork I’ve had to fill out for DSA (Disability Student Allowance); the disability evidence form that took a month to get from the GP, only for it to come back with about twenty words and an official stamp, a copy of the DSA application form itself. Look at my emails, there’s the one I sent with my photocopied DSA evidence over a month ago, here’s all the correspondence between myself and the disability team at my new university, there’s the request to UCLan’s disability team for my disability plan which I had to copy and send to the new university, there’s the hour-long Zoom meeting setting up my new disability support. The messages I’ve had to send to student finance asking why there’s been no correspondence to set up my disability assessment with just over a month to go before I start my course.

There’s a hidden cost to being a disabled student, to being a disabled person, and it’s the time and effort you have to put in to set up and maintain your support – it’s draining. Recently, one of the disabled students in the society shared a meme about our health histories being ‘The Never-ending Story’, and it’s true to most things related to disability. Half the time, I feel like printing out a pamphlet and just handing them out, ‘here’s my disability story, I’ve told it a million times, this will save time’.

This year is different for me because my application is for a new course, and I have to start from square one. But the thing is, DSA already know from my last course that I have a disability – I’ve applied for finance on the same account! I already went through this three years ago, and yet it seems like I have to constantly wade through mountains of paperwork for my own basic needs. I do it because I have no choice, none of us has much of one unless we can cope without the support, but there are times you want to scream.

I’m not alone in this.

In the last few days alone, several members of the UCLan Disabled Student Society have shared their frustrations about the extra paperwork that is thrown at disabled students. One student even commented on how little paperwork a non-disabled family member had to compared to her. The system does not work, it just creates more stress and anxiety for disabled people who want to get an education and succeed. Rather than encouraging us, it feels like the paperwork is another barrier.

There has to be a better way of providing disability support across education, at the very least, but this happens at every stage of education, not just in higher education. We need a way of being able to explain our needs without having to fill out more and more paperwork every single year.

Of course, we want people to know about our needs and put in the right support, and yes, that will require some paperwork. I doubt any of us would dispute that. The problem is that every year we have to undertake some new forms just to be able to access our education, our health, our lives.

If you don’t hear from me in the next few weeks, don’t worry about it. I’m probably lost behind my mountain of never-ending disability paperwork.