I've worked for Birmingham City University for just over 12 years now, and my current role is Head of Disability Services. As a wheelchair-user myself, I've unfortunately got plenty of experience of being excluded from services, being treated unfairly and having to fight for facilities and opportunities that non-disabled people take for granted.
Higher education is a transformative experience, and I'm a firm believer that a disability or health condition must not prevent anyone able to study from getting the opportunity and taking full advantage of it, including being able to have a fulfilling career and the means to live independently.
Kate Waugh
Head of Disability Services
Every disabled person has different experiences depending on their disability or health condition, but we all know what it feels like to be denied opportunities or treated unfairly because of our disability. I hope my understanding of how it feels and all the ways in which we can be excluded from various aspects of life, work and education helps me to focus on the barriers that exist and make things better for our disabled students.
My background
I've spent my career in disability rights. After graduating from law school my early working life was spent with Citizens Advice and a disabled people's organisation. I then joined the Disability Rights Commission (now merged into the Equality and Human Rights Commission) where I managed the national helpline. One of my tasks was ensuring that evidence about the discrimination disabled people were experiencing reached the DRC policy and legal teams, so in that way, I was involved in the development of equality legislation and the guidance that went with it. It was an exciting time!
Why I love working at BCU
A key part of my job is making sure that disabled students have a great experience at BCU. Much of my work involves representing the interests of disabled students across the University, to ensure we consider any potential impact on them of any plans the University has and that we take any opportunity we can to make the experience at BCU as good as possible for disabled students. This means working with lots of colleagues. This is what I enjoy the most about working at BCU - the people – my own wonderful team and the colleagues I get to work in partnership with across the University. I learn something new every time I work with colleagues in other teams, and I have always felt that I'm part of a very big, supportive, friendly team.
Another aspect of my job that I enjoy is meeting applicants, at Open Days, Applicant Taster Days and events that my own team delivers for disabled applicants. I 'm usually first in the queue to volunteer for these because I love the atmosphere and chatting to applicants and their families. It 's a good feeling to reassure them about support at university and catch a bit of their excitement about this new adventure.
We also deliver events in September for new disabled students about to join us – our Life Skills Summer School and Welcome Day for disabled students have been popular fixtures for some years now. My favourite part of our Welcome Day is the information fair we have in the afternoon, where the new students can meet services from across the University and make friends with other new students. The fair always creates a real buzz.
Disability support checklist
Make sure you're ready for university with our disability support checklist
What I and my team do at BCU
Here at BCU I lead the Disability Support Team – 15 colleagues dedicated to helping ensure BCU 's disabled students get the support they need at university to help them achieve their full potential. The definition of disability is very wide, and includes mental health difficulties, so we work with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Team to support students who have mental health difficulties and some other disability or health condition.
My team provides a range of services and I encourage students to tell us as soon as possible if they think they need support – the sooner they do, the sooner we can arrange this and help them apply for Disabled Students ' Allowances (DSAs). We know disabled students who apply for DSAs do better at university than disabled students who don 't apply.
It 's important to start preparing for university well in advance so that all your support is in place by enrolment, and you can settle in as quickly as possible to enjoy your course and student life. I know only too well that being disabled brings lots of boring life admin with it, and that includes arranging support for university, but my amazing team is here to help you with that and make it as painless as possible.
Please do contact my team for a confidential chat if you think you need support, and that message goes out to our applicants as well as our enrolled students – it 's never too early to start arranging your support.
