Notes to help nursing and midwifery students apply for support

Transcription

1 Notes to help nursing and midwifery students apply for support You should use these notes if you are applying for funding under the Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary (NMSB) Scheme and you are studying in Scotland. This includes students who are: on a diploma course in nursing or midwifery; or on an honours degree course in nursing or midwifery. We strongly recommend you apply on-line for funding at It is easier for you and means we can process your application faster. If you can t apply on-line, please fill in form NMSB1, which you can download from our website. Remember, you must apply for funding in each year of your course. If after reading these notes there is anything you don t understand you can: get more information on our website at or us at or phone us on ; or write to us at: The Student Awards Agency for Scotland Saughton House Broomhouse Drive Edinburgh EH11 3UT

2 Contents Important information Page 3 What we will pay Page 4 Section A - what funding are you claiming Page 4 Section B your personal details Page 4 Section C where you normally live Page 5 Section D your education and employment/unemployment Page 6 Section E - institution and course details Page 6 Section F living-costs allowances Page 6 Section G declaration and undertaking Page 8 Section H our checklist Page 8 Our standards of service Page 8 Helping us to help you Page 9 Our appeals and complaints procedure Page 10 2 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

3 Important Please read these notes carefully before you fill in your application form. They explain what funding you can apply for and will help you fill in your form. On the form, you can claim the bursary, the Dependants Allowance and the Single Parents Allowance. You can also tell us if you want to claim the Childcare Allowance for Parents and the Disabled Students Allowance. The form is for students whose course start between 1 August 2015 and 31 July If you are a new student, apply to us as soon as you get a letter of acceptance from your college or university. If you are in your second or a later year, you should send us your form at least eight weeks before the payment is due. If you do not do this, you may not get your money on time. Please fill in the form correctly in CAPITAL LETTERS using black ink. Give us all the details we ask for. Make sure you sign and date the form on page 6 and send us all the documents we need. If you do not do this, we will have to return the form to you. You must tell us immediately if your circumstances change, for example, if you change course, move house, get married, have a child and so on, as this may affect how much we pay you. If you do not hear from us within 30 working days of you sending your application to us, please contact us. We will pay all bursaries or allowances straight into your bank or building society account. If you change your bank details, you must tell us at least three weeks before your next payment is due. If you do not do this, there may be a delay with your payment, or we may send your payment to the wrong bank account. The closing date for applications is 31 March If you are recommencing your course, we will need a letter from your institution confirming the date you are recommencing your course. If you are extending your studies, we will need a letter from your institution supporting a bursary extension. 3 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

4 What we will pay The bursary All eligible students get a bursary. If you are taking the four-year honours degree course and you are eligible for funding, you will get a bursary of 6,578 in years one to three and a reduced bursary of 4,938 in year four. The reduced bursary is because year four is shorter. If you are taking the three-year diploma course, you will get a bursary of 6,578 in all three years. If you are a graduate taking the two year training course, you will get a bursary of 6,578 in both years. Initial Expenses Allowance We will pay you an extra 60 Initial Expenses Allowance in your first year of study. We will include this in your first instalment of your bursary. Living-costs allowances The rest of the funding we may pay you will depend on your personal circumstances. This can include: the Dependants Allowance (note F1); the Single Parents Allowance (note F16); the Childcare Allowance for Parents (note F17); and the Disabled Students Allowance (note F18). Section A - what funding are you claiming? You must put a cross in the boxes on the form to tell us what funding you are applying for. Make sure you fill in all the sections that apply to you and give us all the details we need. Fill in the form correctly in CAPITAL LETTERS using black ink only. If you do not do this, there may be a delay with your payment. Section B - your personal details B1 to B3 - your personal numbers These details allow us to process your application form quickly. There may be a delay in processing your application if these are wrong. B14 to B16 - address This should be your home address (normally your parents home or your own home that you either own or rent). B18 - bank or building society details You must give us a valid bank or building society account where you want us to pay your money. We will pay the funding you are due in monthly instalments. If you change your bank account, you must tell us at least three weeks before your next payment is due. There could be a delay with your payment if you do not do this, or we may make your payment to the wrong account. 4 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

5 Section C - where you normally live C1 to C4 - personal details If you made a successful application to us in the previous session, you do not need to fill in this section of the form. C5 the relevant date The relevant date is the first day of the first academic year of your course. For courses that start in the autumn term (between 1 August 2015 and 1 December 2015), the relevant date is 1 August C6 to C9 - ordinarily resident To be eligible for funding, you must have been ordinarily resident in the UK, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man for three years immediately before the relevant date (the first day of the first academic year of the course). If you are not a UK or other European Union (EU) national, you must have settled status in the UK (as set out in the Immigration Act 1971) immediately before the relevant date. If you do not meet the conditions above, you may still be eligible for funding. You should contact us for advice before you apply for funding. Our contact details are on page 3. The courts have defined ordinarily resident as habitual and normal residence in one place. It means that you, your parents, your husband, wife or civil partner live in a country year after year by choice, apart from temporary or occasional absences such as holidays or business trips. Living in the UK totally or mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education, does not count as ordinary resident. Your immigration or asylum status Students who do not meet the residence conditions above, may still be eligible for funding in certain circumstances. For example, we can pay funding to: UK nationals and family members of such who have returned to the UK to live or study, who currently live or have lived in another EU member state, the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland; UK nationals who were born in and have spent the greater part of their life in the UK (other conditions also apply, see our website for details); UK nationals returning from temporary employment or study outside the UK; nationals of EEA countries who have been granted permanent residence in the UK, and their husbands, wives or civil partner and children or stepchildren; nationals and family members of nationals of other EU member states, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, who have EEA migrant worker/self-employed or Swiss employed/self-employed status in the UK; nationals and family members of nationals of other EU member states, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, who have EEA frontier worker/self-employed or Swiss frontier employed/selfemployed status in the UK; people recognised as refugees by the British Government, and their husbands, wives or civil partners and children or stepchildren; people who have been granted humanitarian protection or discretionary leave in the United Kingdom, and their husbands, wives or civil partners and children or stepchildren; anyone who is under 18 and has been granted temporary protection. anyone who is the dependant child of a Swiss national. 5 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

6 anyone who is the dependant child of a Turkish worker. Our residence conditions are complicated. Please contact us for more information if you are not sure about your eligibility. Section D - your education and employment/unemployment If you made a successful application to us in the previous session, you do not need to fill in this section of the form. If you are a new student, you must give us details of any college or university where you have been a student since leaving school. If you are returning to higher education after a break in study, you need to tell us about your previous course(s) of study. You must also make sure you give us details of all previous employment or unemployment since leaving school or for the last 5 years, whichever is shorter. If you do not give us this, we will have to contact you for this information which will delay your application. If you have previously received public funds for a course of further or higher education, you may still get a bursary for a Nursing and Midwifery course. However, if you have previously received funding for a nursing or midwifery course, we may not be able to offer you any funding for another nursing or midwifery course. You should contact us for advice if this applies to you. Section E- institution and course details You must give us the details of the course you will be studying in If you have previously received money from us and have changed course or institution, you should send written confirmation from your new college or university of your change in circumstances. We normally pay funding for the shortest time you need to finish the course you are taking. If you need longer, please send us a letter from your college or university to confirm this. Section F - living-costs allowances F1 to F15 - Dependants Allowance You can apply for this income-assessed allowance for your husband, wife, civil partner, partner, child or step child and any other adult, if you have a financial and legal responsibility for them. If you and your husband, wife, civil partner or partner are both full-time students, receiving funding from us or any other funding body, only one of you should claim this allowance for your children or other adult dependent. You must give us a clear photocopy of the full (not the abbreviated) birth certificates of any children you are claiming for. Do not send original documents. The maximum amounts you can claim each year are: 2,640 for a husband, wife, civil partner or partner - or if you are single, one adult you have a legal responsibility for who has little or no income from any source 2,640 for the first child, as long as you are not receiving an allowance for a dependent husband, wife, civil partner, partner or other adult dependant 557 for each other dependent child 6 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

7 Any income your dependants have may affect the amount of allowance we can give you. If you are married, in a civil partnership or living with a partner, you must give us details of your husband s, wife s, civil partner s or partner s income, even if you are only claiming for your children. We take account of your dependants gross income from all sources. You should tell us the type of income your dependants have. The table below gives examples of the types of income we do and don t take into account (this is not a full list). We will ignore the first 1,160 of any income each of your dependants have. For example, if you are married with 2 children and your husband or wife has an income, we will ignore 3,480 (3 x 1,160) of their income when calculating your entitlement to this allowance. What is left of your husband s or wife s income after taking off 3,480 will reduce the allowance we can pay you pound for pound. Benefits we take into account (Code 01) Benefits we do not take into account (Code 02) Bereavement Allowance Carers Allowance Income Support Incapacity Benefit/Employment and Support Allowance Industrial Death Benefit Invalid Care Allowance Invalidity Benefit Job Seekers Allowance Maternity Allowance Pension Credit Retirement Pension Severe Disablement Allowance Statutory Sick Pay Statutory Maternity Pay Widowed Parents Allowance Widowed Parents Allowance War Widows Pension War Pension War Disablement Pension (only need the amount that replaces living costs) Working Tax Credit (excluding the Child Tax Credit element Adoption allowance Attendance allowance Bereavement payment Christmas bonus Child Benefit Child Tax Credit Child s Special Allowance Clothing Allowance Cold weather payment Comforts Allowance Council Tax Reduction Constant Attendance Allowance Disability Living Allowance (now called Personal Independence Payment) Guardians Allowance Housing Benefit Winter fuel payment Social fund payment (for a funeral, maternity grant or a budgeting loan) Mobility supplement Personal Independence Payment (previously known as Disability Living Allowance) Scottish Welfare fund (crisis grant and community care grants) We pay the dependants allowance provisionally. This means we will ask you to confirm the actual income your dependents received at the end of your year of study. We will assess the allowance again when we receive confirmation of their actual income. If the amount you are entitled to is less than we previously paid you, we will ask you to give us the difference back. So that we don t pay you more than you are due, you should tell us about any change in your circumstances during the year. If you are responsible for at least one child, you can claim Child Tax Credit, whether or not you are in paid work. You can call Her Majesty s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on to find out if you are eligible. F16 - Single Parents Allowance You can apply for this income-assessed allowance of up to 1,303 a year if you are single, widowed, divorced or separated, and bringing up children on your own. You must send us written evidence to prove your single status when you apply, such as: a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions to show you receive single personal allowances as a single parent; or your tax credit award for from Her Majesty s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) that shows you claim as an individual; or 7 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

8 a letter from a professional person, who knows your circumstances well enough (for example, a doctor, lawyer or minister of religion) who can confirm your status. F17 - Childcare Allowance for Parents If you have childcare costs, we can pay you up to 1,216 a year, depending on your costs, for registered childcare. Registered childcare includes registered: child-minders; after school clubs; day care; sitter services and providers of pre-school and education. You should tell us when you fill in your form if you want to claim this allowance. We will send you a form to ask you for details about your childcare provider and confirmation of the amounts you will pay. F18 - Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) If you have a disability or learning difficulty, you may be eligible to claim for certain extra expenses you have to pay because you are on the course. You can get more information about the expenses we may pay from our website Before we can pay this allowance, you will need to fill in a DSA application form, which you can download from our website or you can pick one up from your college or university. We may need to refer you to an assessment centre for advice on the equipment or support you need. This can take time, so it is essential that you apply as early as possible. Section G - declaration and undertaking You must sign and date the declaration and undertaking on page 6. If you do not do this, we will send your form back to you. We have a duty to protect the public funds we handle. In your application, we ask you to agree to pay us back any money we have paid you that is more than you are entitled to. This may happen if: your circumstances, as described in your application, change; or you fail to meet the conditions of support set out in the Nursing and Midwifery Student Allowances (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (as amended); or Scottish Ministers decide to change the amount of your funding; or Scottish Ministers find that they should not have paid you funding. you are receiving funding from your Health Board. Section H - checklist Before you send us your form, you must do the following. Answer all the relevant questions in the form. If you do not do this, we may not be able to process your application. Make sure that you sign and date the form on page 6. Give us all the information we ask for and tick the boxes to tell us what documents you are sending us. If you have to send us documents, please send in clear photocopies as we destroy all documents after 30 days. Do not physically attach them to your form (for example, do not use pins or staples). 8 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

9 Generally, you only need to send photocopies of any documents with your first application. However, if your circumstances change, we will need evidence of the relevant change. Our standards of service We aim to correctly assess your entitlement to funding so that you have a letter of award telling you what support we will pay and when we will pay it before you start your course. If you send us a correctly filled-in application form by 30 June 2015, we will process this in time for your course starting. If we receive your application after this date, we cannot guarantee you will have your money for the start of your course. We will also aim to: pay all travel claims within 30 days of receiving them resolve all or written enquiries within 30 days or receiving such reply to all formal complaints and appeals within 14 days of receiving such Helping us to help you We ask you to do the following. Fill in your application form correctly and give us all the information we ask for as soon as possible. Keep the award notice we send you and always give us your reference number when you contact us. Let us know immediately if: you change your name, address or phone number; or you change your bank details; or you leave or change your course of study; or there is a change in your circumstances which might affect your entitlement to funding. If you do not do this, we may pay you more funding than you are entitled to, which you will have to pay us back. Contacting us If you need more information, please: get more information on our website at or phone our helpline on ; or us at or write to us at: The Student Awards Agency for Scotland Saughton House Broomhouse Drive Edinburgh EH11 3UT. Phone calls Our helpline is open for calls from 8:30am to 5pm Monday to Thursday, and from 8:30am to 4.30pm on Fridays. Please have your SAAS reference number ready when you contact us. 9 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

10 Our staff will answer calls as soon as they can. If they cannot deal with your enquiry in full when you call, they or another member of staff will call you back within two working days at a time that suits you (within normal office hours). We have an automated phone service that is available 24 hours a day. This service can help you with a limited number of the most common questions. For example, the progress of your application or to request a copy of your award notice Please be aware that we record calls to make sure we give a good service to our customers. Our website You can use your student reference number to track the progress of your application using our on-line enquiry service. This is available on our website ( You can also ask for a copy of your award notice using this service. You can send an to us using the Help and Contact us section on our website. Letter We will do our best to reply as soon as we can. You can help us by giving your reference number on every piece of correspondence you send us. Personal callers at Saughton House You can call at our office to make a general enquiry from 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Thursday, and from 8.30am to 4.30pm on Fridays (but not during public holidays or the Christmas holidays). If you want to discuss your case in detail, with a member of staff that knows about your circumstances, you should make an appointment with them. If you are happy to speak to any member of staff about your case, you do not need to make an appointment. You may have to wait during busy periods to see someone, however, we will aim to see you within 15 minutes. Our appeals and complaints procedures How to make an appeal An appeal is a formal request to review a decision we have made on your entitlement to support and/or our assessment of how much support you should get. An appeal must claim an error on our part and we will only considered such if it is based on us having made an incorrect assessment of your circumstances and/or wrong interpretation of the law. You can make a formal appeal by writing to tell us why you think our decision or assessment is wrong. Clearly mark your letter "Formal Appeal" and write your SAAS reference number on it. Please send this, along with all the relevant documentary evidence to support your appeal, to the address on page 8, and mark the envelope SAAS Appeals. How to make a complaint We are committed to providing high-quality customer services and we would like to hear from you if something goes wrong or you are not satisfied with any aspect of our service. You can complain about things like: delays in responding to your enquiries and requests failure to provide a service 10 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes

11 a request for a service or information that we have not actioned our standard of service our policy treatment by or attitude of a member of staff our failure to follow proper administrative process However, there are some things we can t deal with through our complaints handling procedure. These include: a routine first-time request for a service requests for information or an explanation of policy or practice disagreement with a decision where a right of appeal exists Freedom of Information or Data Protection request decisions legal proceedings or judgements The SAAS complaints information leaflet describes our complaints procedure and how to make a complaint. It also tells you about our service standards and what you can expect from us. Stage one - frontline resolution We aim to resolve complaints quickly and whenever possible within the area that provided the service. This could mean an on-the-spot apology and explanation if something has clearly gone wrong and immediate action to resolve the problem. We will give you our decision at stage one in five working days or less, unless there are exceptional circumstances. If we can t resolve your complaint at this stage, we will explain why and tell you what you can do next. We might suggest that you take your complaint to stage two. Stage two investigation Stage two deals with two types of complaint: those that we have not resolved at stage one and those that are complex and require detailed investigation. When using stage two we will: 1. acknowledge receipt of your complaint within three working days 2. where appropriate, discuss your complaint with you to understand why you are not satisfied and what outcome you are looking for 3. give you a full response to the complaint as soon as possible and within 20 working days We will tell you if our investigation will take longer than 20 working days and agree revised time limits and keep you updated on progress. Recording, monitoring and reviewing complaints We have structured systems for recording complaints, their outcomes and any resulting action. These allow us to identify opportunities to improve our services. Our Management Board reviews the complaints we have dealt with every 3 months to assess whether there are any patterns or trends that suggest we ought to change our procedures. We publish details in our annual reports. 11 NMSB1 2015/2016 Notes