Impact statement
Tell your teaching team more about your impairment or caring responsibilities with an impact statement.
Submit your statement
You can draft your impact statement in the form below and it will be submitted to the Disability Advice Team – we will look over it and then either make suggestions to you for any significant changes or we will go ahead and publish it. We may also edit it slightly, without changing the meaning, because the system we use can only accept certain characters.
There may be up to 1 month between you submitting the statement online and it being visible to your teaching team on their classlist.
Please note: We may not be able to publish your impact statement if you do not provide your evidence as per the instructions on the form, or you indicate that we already hold your evidence, if we do not hold it. If you are a student carer, UWE Cares must have seen evidence of your caring responsibilities.
Or alternatively, if you have an enquiry about writing an impact statement, get in touch with the Disability Service via our enquiry form.
Purpose
An impact statement is a short paragraph or sentence about your impairment or caring responsibilities, the impact on your study, and the strategies you have in place to help. This is then shared with your teaching team via online classlists so that they can support you in the best way.
- Your teaching staff will be able to see your statement when they view their online classlist in addition to Student and Academic Services staff.
- Current students: you can see your statement in MYUWE Your info.
- Applicants: you can see your statement in MYUWE when you become a student.
Your teaching staff are already able to see what reasonable adjustments are in place for you and also a disability category (eg mental health condition, Specific Learning Difficulty, D/deaf or hard of hearing) on your classlist if you have disclosed. You can check what reasonable adjustments and disability category are held on the system by checking MYUWE. The impact statement is designed to provide further information to your teaching staff, if you would like to do so.
Impact statement examples
Akhtar: Borderline Personality Disorder
Akhtar has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This can impact their relationships and can mean their mental health can fluctuate up and down. Akhtar would be very pleased to speak with you further about BPD and the impact on them. Please approach Akhtar discretely.
Ali: caring responsibilities
Ali is a student carer for his son who has Autism, ADHD and limited mobility. Ali’s son attends a Special Educational Needs School. Sometimes Ali needs to leave university commitments early if his son has a medical emergency or the school needs him. Ali needs his timetable as soon as possible to enable him to arrange specialist child care. Ali may have carer-related absences and having access to materials and recordings via Blackboard can support him to catch up. Ali sometimes feels overwhelmed, upset and stressed juggling caring responsibilities, paid work and academic commitments. Ali attends a Carers’ Group through the local Carer’s Support Centre and accesses support through UWE Cares. Ali is happy to discuss his circumstances confidentially with teaching staff.
Huang: Dyslexia
Huang has dyslexia. They are happy for you to ask them about this.
Ruth: ADHD and Asperger Syndrome
Ruth has ADHD and Asperger Syndrome. She has a tendency to fidget which is not a sign that she is not engaged. Ruth takes medication for ADHD but still experiences difficulties with concentration, focus, memory and handwriting. She may use a laptop in classes as opposed to pen and paper. When feeling anxious or in noisy environments Ruth can feel uncomfortable and may wish to remove herself from the situation for 5 minutes as a strategy to manage this. Ruth occasionally struggles with being touched unexpectedly, particularly when already overwhelmed. Ruth can misunderstand things that are left ambiguous, but feels confident to ask if she requires clarification. She has a tendency to speak quickly which can cause miscommunication. She is happy for people to ask her to repeat herself. Fire alarms can cause Ruth anxiety so she would benefit from being forewarned about fire drills. Ruth is happy for you to speak with her discretely about this impact statement.
Sally: road traffic accident
Sally was involved in a road traffic accident in 2012 which caused multiple injuries including trauma to the head, neck and left arm with some nerve damage. She experiences pain and discomfort in her neck and back, which is aggravated by being seated without the appropriate support; she will therefore bring a portable back-rest to all lectures and seminars. Pain and discomfort cause high levels of fatigue and can affect her concentration. Her feelings of anxiety have increased since her accident and are compounded by a concern about further aggravation of injuries. Her anxiety is triggered around large groups of people. Sally has access to mentoring support to help her develop strategies in this area. Sally is aware of this impact statement and is happy for you to approach her discretely to discuss further.
Sarah: depression and anxiety
Sarah has depression and anxiety. She experiences difficulties with concentration and motivation. She uses a digital voice recorder to record sessions to ensure she does not miss key information. Sarah accesses regular mentoring support to develop strategies around motivation. Sarah may have disability related absences but has access to materials via Blackboard to support her to catch up. Sarah is happy to discuss her needs with academic staff providing that she is approached in a confidential manner.
Suggested content
Suggestions for your impact statement:
- Impact statements give us a valuable opportunity to share positive messages about disability, so please include details of strategies and solutions as well as highlighting any relevant issues.
- Include the name or type of impairment, medical condition, mental health condition, or specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia (you don’t need to put lots of detail in).
- Consider the impact on your study and details of any relevant strategies used, such as study skills tuition, mentoring support, assistive software or technology.
- Include short details about your caring responsibilities.
- Whether you're happy for staff to approach you to discuss further.
- If some of your study will be taking place in a lab, you can use the impact statement to describe what barriers you may come across in the lab, eg. noisy environment interferes with my processing, etc.
- Ideally your impact statement should be short, to the point and shouldn’t tell lots of history.
- The maximum number of characters, including spaces, for your impact statement is 1000.
Please don't include the following in your impact statement:
- What year or programme you’re on – they already know.
- What reasonable adjustments you have – your teaching staff can see this on their classlist next to your impact statement. If there is an adjustment that you need that you don’t have in place, please make an appointment to see one of our Advisers.
- Any special characters, such as :;/() – the system we use to keep a record of your impact statement doesn't accept these characters.
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