Care Experienced

Care Leaver / Care Experienced Bursary

The main financial support that we offer care-experienced students is the Care Leaver Bursary. You can see our Terms and Conditions at the bottom of this webpage.

• This bursary is worth £1100 per academic year and is paid to you in two instalments, £550 in November and £550 in April
• You will receive this for each year of your study, but not for any repeat years that you undertake or under certain circumstances if you change courses
• If you have ticked that you are care-experienced on the UCAS and Online Registration form then we will contact you to apply for the bursary
• If you haven’t heard anything from us by October after you’ve registered then please contact us on careleaver@salford.ac.uk

Guaranteed work

We also guarantee work for any care leaver that would like to be employed through our Student Insight Ambassador scheme.

• This is flexible work to fit around your studies and involves working at open days and visit days to show care experienced applicants around the University, working at outreach events and promoting the work that we do as care leaver specialists in askUS
• This is organised through our onsite temporary job agency, Unitemps who can also help you find employment in other areas of the university and in external companies

Additional financial support

• If you find yourself in financial hardship, you can apply for the Salford Support Fund.
• There are also some charities that provide grants or bursaries that you may want to apply for. To find out more about these, please look at the ‘External Links’ section at the bottom of this accordion
• When you get to the end of your course, you may need help with paying for gown hire for Graduation. If you’d like us to support you with the cost of this, then please get in contact with us at careleaver@salford.ac.uk.

Student Halls

Staying in student halls can be part of the fun of coming to university, but it may be worth chatting to your local authority before signing any contracts as they may be able to provide you with long-term accommodation prior to coming to university.

If you stay with our Partner Accommodation that’s run by Campus Living Villages (Peel Park Quarter or John Lester and Eddie Coleman) then we may be able to provide additional support.

• CLV offer 52-week contracts for care-experienced students to make the gap between academic years easier for you by letting you stay in their accommodation over summer
• They can organise for you to book your room without paying the deposit and rental advance up front, and delaying it until the first instalment of your student loan comes in
• If required, we can organise for you to stay at the accommodation for all three years of your study through our ‘Protected Returner’ scheme

If you’d like to find out more about any of the above, please get in contact with us.

Accommodation scholarship

We are also University partners with the Unite Foundation, who have a scholarship that can provide up to three years of free accommodation whilst you’re at university. You can find out how to apply via the This Is Us website. If you’re successful you’ll get your accommodation without having to pay rent or bills for up to three years

Accommodation guarantors

We’ve also become partners with Housing Hand, which can act as a guarantor for your accommodation.

• If you’re in your first or second year at university then we may be able to cover the cost of using Housing Hand
• If you’ve not yet started at Salford then we have an exclusive price of £250 or 8 monthly payments of £35. Please contact the team for further information.

Additional accommodation support

If you ever need any advice or support on accommodation, then we have accommodation specialists within askUS who can help. We also work alongside Manchester Student Homes, who will check the legality of contracts and can provide a list of accredited student accommodation providers and landlords. Our accommodation specialists can be contacted on askus@salford.ac.uk or by calling +44 (0)161 295 0023 (Option 4, Option 2).

The care leaver support specialists within askUS are here to be your first point of contact at the University and, while we usually only deal with non-academic enquiries, we can put you in contact with other areas of the uni. Email careleaver@salford.ac.uk directly so we can provide you with support and set up a one-to-one appointment with you. 

• It is completely normal to want or need to seek additional emotional support at university. We have a dedicated Wellbeing team who will be able to speak with you about anything that is worrying you and refer you into counselling if you’d like. They can be contacted on +44 (0)161 295 0023 (option 1, option 1), on email at wellbeing@salford.ac.uk or through the referral form.
• We have a dedicated Disability Inclusion Service who can provide you with extra support if you live with a disability or learning difficulty. It’s best to contact them before you start university so they can get your support in place before you start. They can be called on +44 (0)161 295 0023 (option 1, option 2) or emailed on disability@salford.ac.uk.
• We have also set up an instant messaging service to connect our care-experienced students and prospective students who are care-experienced. If you’re interested in joining, then please let us know by emailing careleaver@salford.ac.uk.
• We also have a Microsoft Teams group for care experienced students where you can ask specialist advisers questions and talk to other care experienced students at University. This is a closed group for our advisers and other care experienced students. Contact us by email to let us know if you'd like to join.

• Care Leavers’ Association – Your rights and entitlements
• Become. Propel advice 
• Unite Foundation – New Starts report 
• The Prince’s Trust 
• Buttle grants
• The Care Leaver’s Foundation grants
• Greater Manchester Higher
• Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in higher education

The £1100 cash bursary is to support a student’s learning and living costs and is available to UK undergraduate full-time and part-time students verified as care leavers or care experienced and who were under the age of 26 when starting their course.  

A care leaver is a young person who has been in the care of, or has been given accommodation by, their local authority (LA) such as foster care or a children’s home for a period of at least 13 weeks Between their 14th and 16th birthday and including their 16th birthday.  

Care experienced is a wider term that means any person who has experienced care under the age of 18. This is not the same thing as being a ‘Child in Need’; to have experienced care there would generally need to be a court order for removal from the birth family. Anyone who does not fit into the 13-week rule above and does not received support from the local authority, but has at some point been removed from their birth parents would be considered care experienced. This could be for example if you have been adopted if you have a formal kinship care arrangement, or you experienced care before fourteen or after sixteen.  

We recognise that many care experienced people face the same challenges to care leavers but do not receive local authority support. We will include care experienced students for bursary allocation if they fit the other criteria for the bursary listed below. 

The bursary is part funded by charitable donations from alumni and friends of the University who donate in support of current students.  

The fund is managed by the Alumni Engagement and Development team, and the bursary is overseen by the Student Experience and Engagement team. All students who declare their status as a care leaver or care experienced either through UCAS or the Online Registration will need to be verified by the Student Experience and Engagement team before being awarded.  

Every eligible student will be awarded a £1,100 cash bursary each year of the minimum duration of their course. Part-time students will have access to the same amount as full-time students, but their awards will be pro-rated over the scheduled minimum duration of their courses.  

All verified care leavers or care experienced students who fit the eligibility criteria will be supported by the University. 

To receive the £1,100 bursary, (paid in two instalments of £550, one in trimester one and one in trimester two), students must meet all the following criteria:

• Verified as a care leaver or eligible care experienced student by the Student Experience and Support team
• Be studying a course either delivered by the University on the University’s main campus (including Media City) or at a UK partner college: Salford City College, Bury College or Hopwood Hall
• Must be classed as a Home (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands, Isle of Man or Republic of Ireland) for fee purposes
• Must have consented to the sharing of data submitted to the Student Loans Company
• Must have been resident in the UK during the period of care (i.e. England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland also included is Republic of Ireland)
• Must have met the required progression criteria for their course and successfully progress to the next level of study. 
• Must not have been previously registered with the University for any course except where the student is progressing from a foundation course to the first year of an undergraduate course (level 4)

For the 2022/23 academic year:

• Have registered for and be starting a full-time or part-time undergraduate course at level 4 (first year) to be delivered by the University at its main campus or a UK partner college AND must be paying the maximum undergraduate fee of £9,250 per year. This includes those students on a Higher National Certificate (HNC) course; OR
• Have registered for and be starting a foundation course (level 3) to be delivered by the University at its main campus or at a UK partner college: Salford City College or Hopwood Hall

Bursaries will be awarded to those who meet the eligibility criteria at the University at the time of allocation.

Those not eligible for this bursary:

• Students who have been looked after by family members or legal guardians (without the involvement of their LA), have a residency order, or have been given accommodation or supported housing by a charity
• Students who are not classed as home for fees purposes, or whose fee status is unresolved
• Students who were not ordinarily resident in the UK (i.e. England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) or the Republic of Ireland
• Students from Wales receiving who are part of the Government Basic Income Pilot Scheme
• Students studying on a degree apprenticeship course
• Students in receipt of the Estrangement Summer Bursary
• Students deferring entry – subject to awards still being available, students holding offers for a deferred entry will be considered for an award the year they start their course
• Students studying at postgraduate level

• Verification will be undertaken by the Student Experience and Engagement team, who will cross reference information provided through UCAS and Online Registration. Each student who has declared their status will be invited to attend a welcome session to verify their status and discuss their personalised learning support and eligibility for the Care Leavers’ Bursary
• Students who have self-declared as a care leaver or care experienced will be asked to provide evidence that they have been in care. For a care leaver this should be a matter of providing the letter that was submitted to the SLC from your local authority. If you are care experienced or do not have a relationship with your local authority, then you may need to either make contact with them again to write a letter stating that you are care experienced or provide another form of evidence such as adoption papers or court order papers. If you are finding it difficult to find evidence the Care Experience team in askUS should be able to help you if you contact us early enough
• If the student is unable to provide the evidence asked for, the Student Experience and Support team will discuss this in further detail at the welcome session
• The scheduled welcome session will involve the Alumni Engagement and Development team. All bursary holders are invited to attend the team’s events to celebrate their achievements with alumni and friends of the University.

 Awards are not transferrable.

• Payments are expected to be made by the end of the November in the first trimester of study, and April in the second trimester of study
• All cash payments are paid by BACS into a UK bank account only
• The account must be held either solely or jointly in the name of the registered student. Payments cannot be made into the account of another person
• It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that they provide up-to-date bank details to the University in enough time for the payments to be made
• If a student does not provide their bank details by 30 November 2022, they will not receive the first £550 instalment. If they do not provide them before the 30 April 2023, they will not receive the second instalment

• Changing a course and starting again at level 3 (foundation year) or 4 (first year undergraduate). Students who, having started a course, subsequently change courses starting again at either level 3 or 4, will not be eligible for the award against the new course. The original award will remain, but there will be no second payment against the new course. Once the student progresses onto the next level up they will be eligible for the appropriate award to be made for that year of study
• Temporary breaks in study. Students who arrange with the University to interrupt or leave their course on a temporary basis will have their award frozen until they resume studies
• Suspension of study. If students are suspended by the University, their award will be frozen until the suspension has been lifted
• Repeat/extended study. Repeat periods of study and temporary breaks in study that lead to repeat periods of study will not qualify for any additional award. The award entitlement is for the scheduled minimum duration of the course and is not extended for any student
• Leaving or being removed from the course. Students who leave or are removed from their courses will not be expected to repay the amount of their awards which have already been spent. However, the accounts of these students will be closed and any remaining award will not be available to them and entitlement to all future payments will stop on the date they leave or are removed
• In accordance with the Student Privacy Policy, the askUS team and the Schools will need to liaise to verify student status and eligibility to receive payment