Adjust KCL! Campaign Launches

Two KCL students are leading a new campaign to hold King's to account for the strategic inefficiency of services that is overwhelmingly harming vulnerable students.

Adjust KCL! will campaign to raise awareness about the issues vulnerable students (disabled, neurodivergent, low income, in crisis, or at risk for any of these) face, and push for concrete goals to alleviate these issues. To become a Union Campaign and receive KCLSU funding and support, this campaign will need to get 50 petition signatures. So if you want to support this action make sure you sign the petition.

Read Florian's story:

"During the first lockdown I had to work on my PhD from the floor, resulting in pinched nerves and a pain condition I still did not fully recover from. During that time, KCL disability services forgot about my case for 3 months, and then instructed me to apply to the incorrect funder, which caused a further 5 months delay to me getting the equipment I needed.

Without these necessary reasonable adjustments for my new and pre-existing disabilities, in November 2021 the University removed me from my funded PhD due to a lack of expected progress. Due to lack of funds and capacity I became homeless then.

Although I won my Academic Appeal in April, the University has since been unable to find supervisors for my Project to this day. This August, in preparation for restarting my PhD, I successfully applied to become a Residence Welfare Lead to have secure accommodation. However, as I do not have supervisors yet, I am still not getting paid, and I do not hold the correct student status to continue being a Residence Welfare Lead. KCL insists that I will have to leave residences on the 7^th of January, without the means to move or sign a new contract, effectively once again making me homeless.

I'm also at risk of being removed permanently from my funded PhD programme if I cannot find a new supervisor, despite the fact that I lost my previous supervisors due to the University's previous failures, including not providing reasonable adjustments for my disability.

My case has been raised with every KCL support system imaginable, involving over 20 groups or individuals within the University, including King’s Doctoral Students Association (KDSA), and KCL Students’ Union raising my case with officials but to no avail. I have raised 7 written complaints, appeals or representations about the matter, with 2 still ongoing (and unlikely to produce a resolution in time), with the most positive outcomes so far being the decision to reverse my immediate removal from my PhD programme last April, and offering me £1000 in Compensation for the initial 3 months delay by disability services. King's are however still ignoring the majority of neglect and human error committed by KCL staff, which is now leaving me at risk of homelessness and losing my funded PhD.

This campaign is born out of my desire to prevent anyone having to go through something like this again."

Campaign Aims

Adjust KCL! campaign is calling for:

• Making Complaints procedures accessible fostering a culture of belief and accountability.
• Supervisors & personal tutors to be trained and regularly refreshed on what support, access and flexible study options are available & accountable for understanding the disability or health needs of their students to ensure they are getting the support they need.
• More funding and staff for disability services.
• Giving disability services the power to enforce King’s Inclusion Plans & hold faculties/departments accountable to them.
• Taking a person/student-centred approach to support – assigning a named person with an understanding of all support services (housing, welfare, disability, hardship funding etc.) to coordinate support for students with disability or complex needs.
• Expanding and improving the Student of Concern team & ensuring staff know how and when to raise a student of concern report.
• Paying the £60 compensation per month of delay directly to students without requiring students to make another application, with each level of complaint necessary tripling the amount in question.
• Promoting feedback from students in vulnerable positions.
• Enabling all teaching staff to have access to students King’s Inclusion Plans.

To support this campaign, don't forget to sign the petition.