In or Out of Touch? Voice in Policy Decision

Manchester 29th June 13:15 – 14:00

Piers Wilkinson

Piers has been involved with championing disabled people’s access and rights to education for over a decade, including representing disabled people’s voices being elected as National Disabled Students’ Officer for the National Union of Students, appointed as a Commissioner for the Disabled Students’ Commission as, and as commissioner for the House of Lords Higher Education Commission. Most recently, Piers now co-leads the Inclusive Education team for Diversity and Ability, a disabled-led social enterprise. Through these roles, they’ve developed a strong specialist knowledge in inclusive practice, design, and policy development.

As someone who has built disability sport teams to working with sector colleagues within Westminster, Piers enjoys reducing disparities and creating opportunities for everyone to develop and grow together. At the heart of everything Piers does is the embedding of the core disabled community ethos of “Nothing About Us, Without Us”, whether that’s supporting institutions to become more inclusive through embedding accessibility into core practice, championing new standards of good practice, or writing sector leading guidance. Through lived experience and an absurd love of policy, Piers is driven to campaign for disabled people to thrive rather than just survive.

In or Out of Touch? Voice in Policy Decision

In the last few months there have been significant sector publications from high- level stakeholders within the higher and further education spheres. For example, so far in 2023 we’ve already seen the NHS’ Joint Ambition for disabled healthcare professionals and learners, the Disabled Students’ Commission Commitment (as of submission it is due out this month), and the various reports and papers on adjustment passports such as the APPG-AT’s recent paper. Student voice, user voice, and consultation are buzzwords routinely used whenever a publication on disabled students’ support is released. This session will endeavour to challenge “is this good practice?” through an exploration of 3 of the more recent stakeholder publications.

Piers will use their eight-year history as a disabled student voice representative and contributor to student voice-centred projects to l explore an insider’s perspective on to what extent disabled student voices were included in the significant sector papers that call for systemic change within our sector.

Recommendations from such publications may resonate with many professionals. But for the publications to be impactful and to continue rebuilding trust with disabled people post-pandemic, we must ask ourselves: do these papers personify good practice of disabled student voice in policy design?

The format of this session will be a presentation that explores:
– How the Disabled Students’ Commission involved disabled people’s voice and expertise in the development of the Disabled Student Commitment.
– How the NHS involved disabled people’s voice and expertise in the development of their Joint Ambition.
– A critical comparison of publications in sectors outside of education that claim the inclusion of disabled people’s voice.
– Our current sector expectations of what user voice in policy design looks like.
– A summative critique of where the speaker believes the state of user voice in policy design is, and what is the direction we should be heading towards.

Attendees of this session will be given a unique opportunity to see the inside of the policy machine. They will consider what is our standard for policy design that is in touch with the needs of disabled people and students. With the ever-changing environment that disability professionals currently navigate in the goal of supporting disabled students to access and thrive in education, we must have confidence that sector policies and commitments represent disabled students. When we are being asked to determine what is reasonable for disabled students, it surely is only fair we challenge ourselves to ask what is our reasonable expectation for the inclusion of disabled voices in policy design.