Disabilities and equal opportunities
Our approach to support
We use contextual admissions processes to help to mitigate socio-economic disadvantage as part of our screening process.
If you need support to access our selections procedure or feel that any aspect of our process would put you at a disadvantage due to a disability, we will work with you to mitigate these issues and ensure that you are given a fair opportunity to show your potential.
Support for people with a disability
We use ability testing to shortlist our applicants for interview. This is intended to discriminate between people - i.e. to show up differences where these are real. What they should not do is discriminate unfairly. The test provider has extensively baselined the tests we use to ensure that through the use of additional time, people with disabilities such as dyslexia and dyscalculia are not disadvantaged.
We do not read application forms at Lancaster so any information you may put in statements in this form will not be seen by us. If you have a disability and would like to explore reasonable adjustments to our process, please contact us via dclinpsyadmissions@lancaster.ac.uk as soon as possible following the application so we can consider what can be put in place.
We follow the British Psychological Society guidance when making adjustments to our tests to ensure that our testing process does not unfairly discriminate. We make the test providers recommended time adjustment on the declaration of a disability which would impact on the candidate's ability to perform in the tests. Where an applicant requests additional time beyond this, we require the applicant to provide suitable recommendations from a Chartered Psychologist with expertise in this area who can advise on the type and degree of modification that might be needed. This is to ensure that no arbitrary decisions are implemented which would impact on the fairness of the shortlisting process for all applicants.
Where a disability impacts an applicant's ability to interact with the shortlisting tests via a computer, we will assess their requirements on a case-by-case basis in order to ensure that the approach taken is fair to all applicants.
Our current shortlisting process is demonstrating improvements in achieving increased diversity within our cohorts and greater participation in training by applicants with disabilities (see our equality data for more information). We recognize the need for ongoing review and development to achieve our ambitions for an inclusive learning environment, within the scope of professional clinical training.