If the student has given you documentation from a medical professional or someone close to the student describing symptoms that are significant and long term (ie not an injury or something that will soon be resolved).

If the student tells you about long-term symptoms affecting their study eg chronic fatigue or challenges with their mental health.

 In some cases, it may be obvious that a student is disabled. This does not require any specialist knowledge, but if a student is using a wheelchair or other mobility aids, you do not need them to tell you or provide documentation to prove their disability. 

If you are in conversation with the student, you could explain that the Student Wellbeing Service has support for many different issues. This can be provided by Wellbeing Advisers, Counsellors, the Disability and Mental Health Service as well as partner agencies such as Spectrum Life.  You might want to suggest that if you put the student in touch with SWS, the staff there will help them find the right part of the service for them.

For international students, you could explain that in the UK there is legislation in place which gives universities legal duties to make adjustments for students who are disabled, and that the definition of disability is broad. It covers anyone with a condition which has a ‘substantial, long-term, adverse effect’ on their ability to carry out day to day activities. There is some guidance here: What does the law say? - OIAHE

The Disability Referral Form (DRF) has been designed in collaboration with the School’s Data Protection Officer and meets LSE’s obligations under both the GDPR and the Equality Act 2010. The fact that disability declarations will be passed to DMHS in order to meet the School’s obligations under the Equality Act is outlined in the Student Privacy Notice.

Queries relating to data protection and the DRF can be referred to lse.info.rights@lse.ac.uk

All information on the DRF is stored in accordance with the SWS Confidentiality Policy. 

If you are in conversation with the student, yes. If you simply have received documentation from them and are passing that on, please consider amending your departmental policy and provide information to students so they know this will be happening. You do not need to ask permission as it already written into the Student Privacy Notice (see ‘confidentiality’ above). If you are in conversation with the student, you might want to consider using the wording below:

You have shared information with me that indicates that the School may have a legal duty to offer you support and adjustments. I am required to pass this information on to the Disability and Mental Health Service (or the Student Wellbeing Service) in order that this support can be offered to you. If you are not already in contact with DMHS you can expect to hear from them within a week, but in the meantime if you would like to find out more about the support on offer please take a look at their webpage here Disability and Mental Health Service

If the student has told you they do not want to hear from DMHS but has provided information to you which leads you to believe they have a disability, please explain to them that this will limit the support and adjustments that the School can offer. If they continue to request no contact from DMHS, please proceed with completing the DRF but indicate this request and no contact will be made with the student. Below is a form of words that you may find helpful in these circumstances:

You have shared information with me that indicates we may have a legal duty to offer you support, so I must report this to DMHS, but as you have said that at this point you don’t want any contact from them, they will record this on their systems but not make contact with you. If you change your mind, you can contact them at any time. Please remember, if you do not want to speak to DMHS this may limit the support and adjustments the School can provide for you. If you would like to find out more about DMHS and the support you could access, please see their webpages here Disability and Mental Health Service

If you have a safeguarding or risk concern about the student’s mental health, please complete the Cause for Concern form, not a DRF. If the student has disability support needs, these will be picked up, and adjustments offered, as part of this process.

DMHS will only reach out to the student if the information you provide is not already known to the service. For your own record, you may want to keep a note when information is passed on so that colleagues know it has been done. If you know the information has already been passed on to DMHS there is no need to complete another DRF if the student shares the same information a second, or further times. However, if in doubt about whether or not it is new information, please complete the form. 

If you are a member of LSE staff, you will receive a confirmation that we have received the form and DMHS will then reach out to the student, if the information you have provided is new to us. Thereafter we will not provide updates, due to the confidential nature of our service, but we may be in touch if the student does not respond to offer of support. 

If you have general wellbeing concerns, you could look at the ‘general concerns’ section of Cause for Concern guidance and speak to the student about the support available at LSE as well as suggesting they contact DMHS themselves. Any student can request an appointment, with or without medical evidence: Booking an appointment

If you are not sure whether to complete a DRF or a CFC form, please email student.wellbeing@lse.ac.uk and we will advise. 

Once you have completed the DRF, we would advise you to take steps to support the student before their formalised ‘My Adjustments’ are put in place.  There is lots of information on our staff webpages, including actions that you can take which will benefit students with different disabilities.