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    DISABLED STUDENTS’ OFFICER 

    JAKE BRACKSTONE (HE/THEY) 

    Disabled Students’ Officer 

     

    About me 

    Howdy, I am a third year Politics and IR student, and a neurodivergent (ADHD) individual who wants to serve as your Disabled Students Officer for 22/23. I’m passionate about supporting people with disabilities and in 2021, I founded the UWE Neurodiversity Society. I'm also currently the PAIRS Equality and Participation Officer.

     

    Mental health is a crucial part of everyone’s life, but when you have a disability, it can make things more difficult. Tackling mental health and stigmas around it and disabilities is important to me and an example of this passion is at TEDxUWE where I aimed to help people create their own ordinary.

     

    What am I working on? 

    Creating disability networks:

    • Starting a committee of representatives from different disability-based societies with the aim of creating an accountability and voice system to the DSO. This would also help to create a louder voice for disabled students at UWE and act to give societies more power within their area of disability.
    • Strengthen the communication between the Disability Service and students.
    • Working with the British Sign Language Society to look at promoting the learning of BSL as a second language.
    • Contacting other universities to work towards creating a National University Neurodiversity Network, leading to more representation for neurodivergent individuals. Only recently, neurodiversity has been picking up recognition, but so much more can be done.

    Neurodiversity:

    • Providing weekly peer-run study sessions. There will be a few sessions a week so people can share strategies with each other.
    • Creating more sensory friendly events and lobbying UWE to make more rooms sensory friendly with adjustable lighting. This will also include sensory warnings for certain events.
    • Raising awareness for different types of neurodiversites using student created content to stop stigma’s and stereotypes.
    • Starting special interest sessions at The Students’ Union where people can share their special interests with others.

    Mental health and wellbeing:

    • Creating monthly events for mental health such as dog walks, Cycle for Mental Health and starting a buddy programme. The buddy programme specifically would help those who are suffering from loneliness by creating a safe, friendly environment.
    • Collaborating with The Green Team to promote UWE’s Community Garden for wellbeing along with a sensory friendly environment.
    • Making sure that at least two people in every society have mental health training.
    • Running more anxiety friendly events at The Students’ Union.
    • Promoting a new attitude that moves away from the ‘just don’t worry about it.’

     

    Get in touch 

    suelections@uwe.ac.uk

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