At 20% of the total student population, the University of Sussex has a higher than average rate of disability disclosure among its student population compared to the national average of 16% (HESA, 2021). The Disability Advice Team at the University of Sussex provides support and guidance to over 4,600 disabled students, with a key focus on supporting disabled student retention and attainment. Non-Medical Help (NMH), including one-to-one support workers for students, is a high volume service offered through the Disability Advice team.
With a large and growing population of students with disabilities, the Disability Advice team needed faster and clearer oversight of student engagement with the support worker service offered, which includes notetakers, lab assistants, study assistants and sighted guides. Outsourcing the management of the support workers offered a strategic solution to better meet the needs of their disabled students, and also allowing repurpose of internal resources.
The University of Sussex decided to partner with Amano, a specialist provider of Non-Medical Help services for higher education institutions. Amano created a bespoke service that included:
Increased student engagement and satisfaction with the support worker service.
Robust support worker team who were able to provide tailored and flexible support to meet the diverse needs of disabled students.
Improved budgeting accuracy with data from the reporting system providing greater evidence-based insights. Not only justifying the costs of the support worker service for a growing population of students, but also helping identify any areas for improvement and efficiency.
Individualised student data and a bespoke ‘flagging system’ designed into the reporting system helped highlight students who may be at risk of falling off track, enabling the team to focus attention where needed to prevent disengagement before it happened.
Enhanced team productivity, as the team was able to focus more on delivering personalised, high quality support to the students, rather than managing the administrative and operational aspects of the support worker service.
Nasim Shakoori, Head of Student Advice and Guidance at the University of Sussex said: “We can go into next year with really strong budgetary understanding. Plus, we see and feel like we have a team behind us in Amano, which is very reassuring. We have invited the Amano team to join our Disability Advice team meetings and they have visited us on site to review progress of the contract face to face.”
Natasha Hardiman, Amano Head of Operations said: “We can drill into specific student data and flag any that are at risk of falling off track, allowing our Amano head office team to step in and encourage the student to take up their support, and for us to notify the team at the University, so that they can also keep track and provide support from their side.
“We also monitor the different areas of support to see where we may need to connect with individual support workers and ensure they have the tools they need to meet the requirements of the role. This ensures that no part of our service can go unseen and therefore the students needs should be met with a consistent and reliable service.”
Mike Pudan, Lead Disability Advisor said: “The Amano reporting is an outstanding tool in terms of student monitoring. It provides an additional layer of insight into what is going on with students who may be falling off track. This gives us the confidence as a disability support team to make decisions and communicate with students at a personal level. Also can help move to a solution faster, such as understanding who might be best to help resolve an issue – is it best placed with us or is it something Amano can help with? Or do we both need involved?”
Imogen Pennington, Disability Coordinator said: “Working with Amano has helped ease pressure in terms of our involvement with admin. This allows our team to focus on other areas of service delivery. Our approach focuses on empowering students to take control of their own support through their improved independence. With less time spent on admin we can spend more time on providing tailored advice to each student.”
Nasim Shakoori, Head of Student Advice and Guidance concluded by saying: “Amano offers a great forecasting report. It can be tricky to estimate costs due to variable student engagement and it is also hard to estimate how many hours each student might need. I appreciate Amano’s approach to reporting and how they take care in listening and understanding what we need to know. The service far exceeds what we hoped for.”
Amano is an eQuality Solutions Group (eQS) company. To find out about how Amano or any of the eQuality Solutions Group of companies can create a bespoke support service to meet your organisation’s needs, speak to our Head of Operations Natasha Hardiman: Natasha.hardiman@e-q-s.com.
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