UK Disabilty History Month 22 November – 22 December

Guest post by Emma Hanlon, final year Forensic Science student

We’ll be featuring a number of guest posts to mark UK Disability History Month – here’s our first.

Before coming to Sheffield Hallam I had personal experience of how difficult obtaining support in the work place and education system can be due to a disability. In fact my favourite two words were ‘equal opportunities’ as that is what kept me employed and in education. Due to my disability I hardly attended my last year of high school, was suspended from my second college for the first two and a half months (wish I would have done something more exciting than fainting to be suspended for!) and faced many exclusion problems after that due to health and safety and attendance reasons.

That all changed when I came to Sheffield Hallam.

I have a physical disability that there is no treatment, knowledge of and no cure for called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS) is an abnormality of the autonomic nervous system (sometimes called ‘Dysautonomia’). The autonomic nervous system regulates all bodily functions and systems that we don’t have to think about, such as: heart rate and blood pressure regulation, digestion, bladder control, sweating and stress response for example. Since my autonomic system does not function properly all of those systems are not regulated properly and malfunction in many different ways, one at a time or as a combination of a few at a time. Each day is different.

I receive a wide range of support through the University’s Disabled Student Support such as; a personal assistant that sits with me in all of my lectures, a note taker for all of my lectures including when I am absent, a mentor that I see once a week to make sure that I am on top of my workload and the support of Student Wellbeing to make sure that stress levels from University and my personal life are not affecting my physical health too much as well as many pieces of equipment and other arrangements with the Learning Centre and my academic tutors.

The support I have received whilst being at Hallam has been incredible and means that slowly but surely I am completing my degree.

My advice to students reading this would be that even though disclosing your disability may have caused problems and distress in the past University is able to provide a lot more support and understanding than schools and colleges you will have been to before. Even if you do not need the support right now it is helpful to have the support in place for if you do need it if things get worse for a couple of weeks or months whilst you are University. You may just find once piece of equipment, change in assessment type or other support that just makes everything so much easier for you.

Emma at Sheffield Wellbeing Festival 2015

Links:

UK Disabled History Month http://ukdhm.org/2015-launch/

Sheffield Hallam University Disabled student support services

Sheffield Hallam University Student wellbeing services