The end of April brought the final closure of the charity ‘Stand Alone’. Many fear it could turn out to be the cruellest month in the gathering wasteland of higher education in the UK. Devoted to promoting help for students with no family support, Stand Alone made authorities aware of their existence and sought a pledge to support them. Let us hope the plight of students estranged from their families will not be swept back under the carpet of indifference.
The Standalone Charity was first registered in November 2013 by Becca Bland who had first-hand experience of estrangement. She stood down towards the end of 2023 after achieving considerable success for over ten years.
Devoted to finding help for people who find themselves without support and cut off from their families, their impact on seeking formal help for students in this precarious position has been crucial. While students who have been in care previously and are ‘care experienced’ can expect considerable support, those estranged are generally less visible and more vulnerable. Care-experienced students are not considered here and for others, the expectation is that the family will always step in. This is a naïve expectation at best.
The stated charitable objectives of Stand Alone at the outset were,
“To promote social inclusion for the public benefit by preventing people who are estranged from their family or members of their family from becoming socially excluded, relieving the needs of those people who are socially excluded and assisting them to integrate into society. For the purpose of this clause ‘socially excluded’ means being excluded from society, or parts of society, as a result of family relationship breakdown. To advance education among the public on the subject of family estrangement.”
It is hoped that their pressure and influence will not be missed. Yet there is still a niggling doubt that the rule of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ will prevail over time.
Achievements.
There is no doubt that Stand Alone has had a profound effect in raising awareness of the problems of individuals estranged from their families. This is especially severe for younger adults trying to make their way in the world. The reasons for this are multiple, often compounded together to drive a young person away. The upshot is no financial or emotional support and a sense of abandonment. Hardly an ideal way to set out on a career.
Standalone held a final event ‘Passing the Baton’ on 20th March 2024 to ensure continuity of support for young people. It sought a ‘Legacy Pledge’ from universities already signed up.
A legacy pledge.
Stand Alone Director, Susan Mueller has produced a valuable overview on the Higher Education Policy (HEPI) site with, ‘Stand Alone: 2015 – 2024: 10 years of changing higher education for estranged students’.
Since its closure was announced, she has been working hard to ensure a legacy for Standalone. Instrumental in promoting a Standalone Pledge since 2016 across universities in the UK, she has had considerable success. It seems many universities were not fully aware of the simple need to provide year-round support for students not able to rely on family, especially over vacations. Also, without parents as guarantors for rental accommodation, many students bear considerable added costs.
Despite this effort, the coverage is still not complete. In total, 114 universities signed the pledge since 2016. However, this leaves a considerable number not doing so across the UK. For example, universities in Northern Ireland declined. The common belief is that there are not many students in this position and universities declare they have seen few of them. This is likely to be a considerable underestimate. University is likely to be a huge barrier to those with no family support and it might not be a surprise that so few make it through their portals. Nevertheless, to date, twenty-three have signed up to the Stand Alone ‘Legacy Pledge and it is hoped that others will follow on effectively.
Funding and proving estrangement.
Those responsible for funding students might accept that some university applicants are estranged and need financial support. But proving it is not a simple matter as easy as self-declaration. Stand Alone offers a wide definition that takes in anyone failing to receive family support,
“Estranged students are young people studying without the support and approval of a family network. Young people in this position often have no contact at all with their family and have removed themselves from a dysfunctional situation.”
After encouragement from Stand Alone, UCAS included a call for students to declare their situation with a similarly broad definition,
“Young people aged 25 or below, studying without the support and approval of either parent due to a breakdown in their relationship. This might be biological, step or adoptive parents, or possibly wider family members who have been involved in your care”.
This was a very important success in getting, for the first time, recognition of being estranged for students entering the UCAS selection process. Universities can no longer turn a blind eye, it’s there in the application.
So far so good. But then there is the hurdle of finance.
Finding finance.
This turns out to be a different problem and this has become a sticking point. UCAS is the first point of contact that provides the bad news. It notes on finance that,
“You have not communicated with either of your biological or adoptive parents for 12 months (this is flexible) before your course begins and the situation is irreconcilable.”
“You can show you have been financially independent for three or more years through employment or benefits (consecutively or non-consecutively) before your course begins”.
Student Finance England defines it as,
In practice, this means at least twelve months with no contact. The onus is on the student to provide proof to receive a maximum maintenance loan. It is therefore vital that students choose a university that is prepared to guide them through the maze of uncertainty.
“Generally, estrangement means the student has little or no contact with their parents (either biological or adoptive) and this is unlikely to change.”
Scepticism.
The ‘middle class’ sensibility often does not accept that there could be such a thing as ‘no support’ for their offspring. This leads to a scepticism that boils over into believing that students are feigning estrangement to get more money. Indeed, this was the attitude of the student loan company back in 2018. It was reported in the Guardian in August 2018 that the ‘Student Loans Company ‘spied on vulnerable students’ social media’. Trawling through Facebook pages of students for any evidence of contact with family set a very sinister tone. TEFS looked closer with ‘The Student Loans Company chasing vulnerable students: A very worrying trend’. See also links in the footnote below.
In response, Becca Bland pulled few punches in the Guardian with ‘Why is the government halting loan payments to vulnerable students?’ pointing out that it was an unjustified ‘fraud investigation’ and
“There is no legal statute for young adults to claim the finance it is expected they should receive from family. This places them at the mercy of familial goodwill to provide it”.
Impact of estrangement.
There is little doubt that setting out with no parental support is a major challenge for any young person. Until Stand Alone stepped in, there was little or no recognition of the stress and distress suffered by estranged students with no family to fall back on. There can be many reasons that lead to a student losing family support. This might happen unexpectedly when they choose a course not ‘approved’ by their parents. Other parents may withdraw all financial support at the age of eighteen as a matter of principle. There may be contact with family, but nothing productive. This was my experience in 1974 when there was no support available (see TEFS 27th April 2018 ‘Scum of the Earth Maybe – but Educated Scum Nevertheless!’)
Some may hold views or a lifestyle not to the liking of their parents and have to leave home, others may be running from abuse. The list goes on.
The psychological impact of feeling abandoned is profound. Back in 2015, Stand Alone with the Unite Foundation released some research ‘New Starts: the challenges of higher education without the support of a family network’ from a survey of 7,138 students. This compared the profiles of care leavers (126) and estranged students (275) and highlighted the profiles and vulnerabilities of both groups and the differences in the support available. Data then from the Student Loan Company from 2013/14 indicated that there were 9,338 independent and estranged students.
The vacations are a particular problem with one student putting it starkly,
“I’m currently homeless as my accommodation at uni has expired and I move into the next one in September. I have nobody to turn to for help as I was living in a hostel before I moved to my university.”
Recognition of the pressures of such profound insecurity and how to deal with it are not well advanced. More recently in 2022, Becca Bland and co-authors produced valuable research insights in ‘The efficacy of a facilitated support group intervention to reduce the psychological distress of individuals experiencing family estrangement’. They concluded,
“Although estrangement is thought to be prevalent the UK and other countries and cultures around the word, little has been offered by the clinical or therapeutic community in terms of focussed interventions to reduce the distress that people in this position may feel. From this data we can conclude that it is possible to reduce the psychological distress of those individuals who are estranged from a family member, and that facilitated support groups can help those attending to feel alone and ashamed”.
My glimpse into the world of ‘no money and no support’ as a student in 1974 was compounded by the view of one bank manager refusing a small overdraft. He saw me as ‘scum’.
“I don’t see why we should pay to educate scum like you”.
Pride and self-respect are the first casualties. But I refused to stoop to begging for the right to continue my education and I walked away. Unlike him, I was educated, streetwise beyond his comprehension and on a mission to go much further. It was spring and at least hope was intact.
“April is the cruellest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.” T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland 1922.
The author, Mike Larkin, retired from Queen’s University Belfast after 37 years teaching Microbiology, Biochemistry and Genetics.
Footnote: More from TEFS on estrangement.
Tip of the iceberg: Estranged students at UK universities October 11, 2019
Entering the world of Higher Education: More realism about students is needed September 20, 2019