Thirteen institutions across West Yorkshire, including Leeds Conservatoire, have developed a collaborative response to support care-experienced students by encouraging them to tick the UCAS care-experienced box in their application to the institution.
Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY) is a partnership of thirteen higher education providers, working collaboratively to reduce long-standing inequalities in access to, success in and progression from higher education. GHWY supports its member funded institutions with their Access and Participation Plan activity, covering collaborative activity to reduce inequalities in HE.
This collaborative approach has led to sharing the broader definition of care-experienced, as this term is more inclusive of the range of care settings students may have experienced. These include where students will have spent time living with foster carers under local authority care, in residential care, looking after at home under a supervision order, or in kinship care with relatives or friends, either officially or informally without local authority support at any stage of their life.
Professor Jane Owen-Lynch, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) at The University of Huddersfield and Chair of GHWY, shared the following:
“We are delighted that all of Go Higher West Yorkshire’s member institutions are working together to use this common definition of ‘care-experienced’. This will be incredibly helpful for care-experienced students navigating what can be a complex system, and ensure that those in need of support are better able to get access to it.”
By adopting this wider definition of care-experienced, students will be able to receive support from the institution that they have applied to.
