ADRC Third Party Policy
The Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre (ADRC) works directly with students to support them during their studies, aiming to treat them as autonomous adults. It also works with staff supporting those students.
The ADRC will only liaise with a third party where the student has requested explicitly that the third party be contacted for disability reasons and has given appropriate written consent. The ADRC requires that where decisions are to be made or consents given by the student, these must continue to be made or given by the student.
Students seek the involvement of connected third parties, such as parents, guardians, partners and sponsors, with the ADRC for a variety of reasons. They may wish them to provide information about a student, request information, act as an advocate or make a complaint on behalf of a student. In the majority of cases the ADRC recognises that third parties are motivated by genuine desire to protect the interests of the student and it is in the student’s interests to involve them.
However the ADRC has a duty of care to protect its staff and students and to manage its resources effectively. To this end it reserves the right in its absolute discretion to refuse to liaise or to continue to liaise with a third party, particularly if it is felt that contact may impact negatively on staff time or resources, or where the third party is behaving in an aggressive or threatening way.
Information given by a third party about a student will generally be recorded on the relevant student file, to which the student can require access, under the terms of the General Data Protection Regulations.
For more information on the Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre Confidentiality Policy see https://www.disability.admin.cam.ac.uk/staff-supporting-disabled-students/confidentiality-0