Into Physiotherapy: Welcoming and Supporting Disabled Students promotes the creation of a positive learning experience for people with disabilities. It provides guidance to educators on developing inclusive policies and procedures throughout the student journey – from application to preparation for employment – in line with statutory requirements and by building on existing good practice. Ann Green, CSP chair of Council, said the resource would help to ensure that ‘disabled students are enabled and supported to qualify, contribute to patient care and achieve a fulfilling professional career as a physiotherapist’. Karen Atkinson, manager of the RNIB’s allied health professions support resource centre and one of the authors of the resource, said the aim was to ‘provide staff with the confidence to evaluate current practice, introduce appropriate modifications and engage in an on-going dialogue with disabled students’. Co-author Jane Owen Hutchinson, RNIB physiotherapy support service manager, said she hoped it would ‘encourage a climate in which diversity and difference are positively valued and where attitudes to custom and practice are flexible’. Into Physiotherapy is being distributed through the CSP’s links with educators. Copies are also available upon request and the resource will shortly be on the CSP website. For further information, email enquiries@csp.org.uk or tel 0207 306 6666.
The CSP and the Royal National Institute of Blind People have produced a resource to increase disabled peoples access to physiotherapy education.
