Swinburne support for students with ADHD

By Dawn Hipe.

1 in 20 Australians live with Attention Deficit HyperActivity Disorder (ADHD).  For university students with ADHD it can be difficult to complete their degrees and graduate.

Awareness of ADHD has increased in the last decade, with universities establishing key services to help disabled students.

“Being a student, your experience can go up-and-down, sometimes you feel like you got it under control other times you don’t. We hope that over time people are more comfortable reaching out and ask us for help,” said Kelly Bramston, a student support worker from Swinburne University of Technology.

At Swinburne in Melbourne they have established a support service for students called AccessAbility. The service helps students work around their disabilities by providing additional support relevant to their course requirements. But what does this process look like? Kelly Bramston is one of the team leaders at Swinburne's AccessAbility Services.

“What we do is we meet with that student; they’ll meet with an advisor and that advisor will go through what their experience is” she said “Their lived experience of their disability and any medical recommendation they have. Any past experience they have in education and what has worked and what hasn’t worked.”

“We’ve obtained a new assistive tech app that is useful for ADHD students called focus bear that we’re making available to students for free,” she said. “That can be helpful for organizing study.”

Focus Bear is an app developed to help people with ADHD and Autism develop healthy work schedules and routines in order to improve their focus and long-term concentration. This app was designed and developed by a team of ADHD and Autistic people. 

October is international ADHD Awareness month.

Picture: Adobe Stock