Best Universities for Autistic DD with social anxiety. Looking for flexibility

[whatisgoingonandwhy]

Posting for traffic. DD has autism but is very bright academically. She struggled a lot in high school but has flown in her A levels as she is attending an online college. She would like to study psychology and work with autistic children in some capacity. Has recently started to make progress in socialising more but is extremely daunted at the prospect of having to attend classes. Are there any Uni’s that have the flexibility to attend classes in person or online, or any that are particularly supportive for those who are neurodivergent?

Not all unis are a sea of faces. DS chose a smaller uni deliberately, the sea of faces is sometimes single digits. He knows all his tutors and they know him, it doesn't help.

Thank you for this. I didn’t realise how it worked. When l was at uni we had the same lecturers for 3 years.

Should her personal tutor not offer extra support though?

Her personal tutor will be a reference for the first job she applies for. It helps if she’s on some of their modules.
Theyre not a personal tutor like a private tutor

The way it works at my institution is that if there is a known disability or other pastoral reason why attendance is lower than expected, and the student is otherwise engaging (e.g. handing work in, responding to tutor emails), we don't send attendance warning letters because it's not appropriate. The tricky situations are when you suspect something might be going on, but the student isn't responding - sometimes the engagement warning is the only way to pull them out of the woodwork.

To your DS, I'd say that students - especially anxious ones - are often more fearful of attendance monitoring than they need to be. I've never known us kick out a student who was handing in work of a passing grade. No one will be bothered if he misses a lecture or two because he's ill (including ill meaning, not feeling up to it today).

What extra support is she wanting?

If a personal tutee asked me for a meeting because they were struggling, I would have that meeting asap. But it would be to come up with strategies with them that might help improve things, or to signpost them to other services, and then perhaps to check in again in a few weeks time. I might offer to email their other tutors to explain that attendance might be patchy for a period if there were difficult short term circumstances. If they needed an adjustment to the course, that has to go through the disabled students team; I have literally no power to change assessments of my own volition on my own courses, let alone someone elses. I can't grant extensions or extenuations (though I can and do tell students how to apply for these).

The purpose of a university is education, not facilitating young people’s growth

It says in her learning support plan that her personal tutor should make contact once a week.

Nada. And now it’s the end of November. Why pay for for disability people to write this stuff? No one reads it.

I was worried about my ASD teen - asked lots of questions during open days and many universities seem to offer good support. Decided a uni not too far away would be better in case of anxiety/needing to come home.
I have been really pleasantly surprised by how well she's coped with the transition. She had a call from the university before starting outlining where to go for support and asking what she needed - this was passed on to her personal tutor (with her permission) Good luck to you both.

I work in a university and am a personal tutor. I can support with some things but I don't have the competence to deal with more serious support needs so would signpost on to the welfare office, counselling, NHS, third sector organisations as appropriate. It'd be wrong for me to support outside the level that I am trained for and confident for. But we tend to assign students that we know will have significant support needs to more experienced personal tutors with more training and there's also the option to reasign to a more trained personal tutor if a particular student needs a lot of support.

With a ND DC with ASD I completely agree with @HelmholtzWatson

First, I'd check the personal tutor actually has the support plan. There are some students whose I haven't seen yet. Yes this is terrible, but it's not actually my fault. Can your DD send it to them directly? No, she shouldn't have to do this, but it's often the best way forward.

As I said above, I think a weekly email isn't a realistic support plan, but if it's been agreed then it should be adhered to. Probably the best step is for your DD to raise it with the Head of Department, and ask for a new PT.

It’s not for that.

She has ADHD. She’s friendly, outgoing and capable. But like a lot of people with ADHD she has trouble initiating and particularly advocating for herself.. This means she finds it impossible to ask for help off her own bat if she struggling with workload etc. She also struggles with sending emails but perseveres.If someone else initiates she’ll say everything.

This will come in time, at one point she wouldn’t talk to doctors. But she isn’t there yet. So should she be denied support or education because of this?

Its literally 5 mins or less a week.

Perhaps the tutor is assuming since she hasn’t asked she no longer needs it

And has a lot of other things to think about, and isn’t being paid to specifically look after your daughter . What with the whole research, teaching, prep for teaching, and other thirty personal tutees

Offering a different perspective here. My DD is at UEA and is autistic. She's living in a quiet flat and it's been great for her because it means she has somewhere on campus where she can get away from it all and have her own space. It suits her much better than commuting from home as she would sometimes find the bus overwhelming when she was at 6th form and also would struggle with noise in study periods etc. whereas now she just goes back to her room to work. They have said she can live on campus for her 2nd year too as she thinks a student house would be too much.

I key point I forgot to make is that UEA is a half hour drive from our home, so she has a safety net should she need it, although she hasn't yet. It's given her a bit of confidence that we are there, but she actually finds uni less overwhelming than home (we have a busy household with lots of people in and out).

It says in her learning support plan, tutor needs to initiate contact, That is the whole point of the plan, and it explains why in great detail.

Are you saying that 5 minutes or less a week is impossible to ask if everything is OK? I mean come on. Not all the 30 are going to have a learning support plan. Maybe 3? And they won’t all need the same thing.

5 mins or less a week to check in is impossible? What’s she paying for?

Open university would probably be the best option or one close to home that she can commute to. I think it might be too overwhelming living away at university.

All I see from you in that thread is rudeness, hostility and hyperbole @ArseInTheCoOpWindow.

You first claimed it was 1 minute a week, then 2 minutes and now 5 minutes. Is your DD still mute and suffering from ND burnout? If she’s unable to speak to or email the tutor directly, what are they realistically supposed to do? They’re not a babysitter. University is very clearly not a suitable environment for your DD at this stage.

The lecturers on that thread told you explicitly that they simply haven’t the time, training or capacity to give students like your DD the support she needs. They’re overworked and burnt out yet you think they should sacrifice their mental
health and well-being even further? Just astronomical levels of entitlement.

But, presumably, if there is an issue, the PT then has to deal with it? The first email itself is five minutes. But then the student responds saying, "I'm struggling with workload." Which could mean a million things. So there's another email to set up a meeting (and there also might be a "can I just send you some questions by email?" diversion). Which the student might or might not attend. So there's a follow up email, if they don't, and another meeting to schedule. If they do attend, perhaps we spend 30 minutes getting to the bottom of the problem, and I offer advice, but probably worry that it's trite (is saying, "lets make a schedule" actually going to help a student with severe ADHD?). And then I email next week to say, how's the workload going? And the answer is, oh, still not great. So we have another meeting to discuss what they tried and what worked... And I probably email disability services to flag with them, and possibly wellbeing, and possibly also the senior tutor in the department.

I want inclusive education, and I think students like your DD should have support to learn. But it's not in my workload capacity to provide it at the level above.

What your DD needs is a disability mentor whose job it is to do this check in, help her manage her ADHD, and help her initiate contact with her personal tutor about specific queries/struggles with her academic work. DSA can fund this because its something that's a demand over and above what students would usually require.

1, 2, 5 minutes. What’s the difference?

Yes she’s still in burnout and yes she is still mute in certain situations. Speaking to tutors being one of them. She’s coping well and needs a tiny tiny bit of support.

Whats hostile about that?

A babysitter😂😂😂how about her tutor pulls his finger out and does something?

And actually she’s thriving. Getting 100% on lots of projects. But l forgot. She’s not suitable for university is she? Because she’s ND.

Realistically single digit courses are being axed as not financially viable sadly.

A weekly check in is not in their remit @ArseInTheCoOpWindow as has been explained to you on both threads. As is the fact that disability teams often set unrealistic expectations in learning plans that tutors simply cannot meet. The OP of the other thread stated that if she was told to pro-actively check in with students each week, she’d refuse as it simply wouldn’t be possible. She also said that 29 of her students had learning plans so 5 minutes a week for all of them would amount to 2.5 hours.

Your DD is paying for the course, not private tuition, or a therapist or a babysitter.

You don’t know how many tutees the tutor has though? Though the plan shouldn’t include the impossible. You may well be right and the uni is being crap. I wonder if anyone told her tutor that was what she needs?

She isn’t paying for that though don’t forget. Unless her fees are more than the next persons?

If she’s thriving what difference does it make? Do you just want create work for the personal tutor for point of principle?

But they won’t all have the same learning plan will they?

And if they can’t do it, or won’t why is it written down in a learning support plan? And why is it unreasonable to expect that learning support plan to be followed?

Is 2.5 hours excessive to devote to students? Really?