Care Experienced Students

Care experienced students are defined differently by Local Authorities, Student Finance and the University.

You are care experienced if you have spent time living with foster carers under local authority care, in residential care (e.g. a children’s home), looked after at home under a supervision order, or in kinship care (looked after by relatives or friends). You can learn more about this through UCAS.

You will have been asked to declare your care leaver status on your UCAS form and student finance application. If you didn’t declare at this stage or during the Loughborough University registration process, you may still be eligible for support if you let the University know that you have experience of care.

To access general support as a care experienced student please email careleavers@lboro.ac.uk.

To access support with money and housing related matters you can also make an appointment with the Student Advice and Support Service.

Care experienced HE students and graduates of any age can also join the ‘This Is Us’ student led community where they can chat with others, share helpful info, arrange meet-ups, organise games-night, find existing local groups near you, run day-trips/holidays, have serious conversations, give peer-support, pose questions, etc.

Depending upon your individual circumstance you may be eligible for financial support from your home local authority. Students entering H.E. before the age of 25 may be eligible to a one off bursary of at least £2,000. Speak to your local authority about this. There are further details on the Become charity website as well as a wealth of other information.

There is a special package of support for care experienced students available from Loughborough University including the Care Leavers Bursary.

For the purposes of the Care Leavers’ Bursary, a Care Leaver is defined as a young person who has been in care of the local authority and/or Health & Social Care Trust for at least 13 weeks since the age of 14. Care Leavers who have subsequently been adopted, or are the subject of a Special Guardianship Order, will not automatically be eligible for this enhanced financial award. Detailed eligibility information is set out in the Loughborough University Bursary terms and conditions in the Student Handbook.

To apply for the Care Leavers bursary, you will need to complete the application below by clicking the link.

You only need to complete the application once to establish entitlement for the whole of your course. (Note that the Bursary is not paid during a placement year.) If you need help with the application form, please contact Careleavers@lboro.ac.uk

Financial assistance may be granted from the Hardship Fund Summer Scheme if you are living independently over the summer. It is expected that students will attempt to find paid work or other means of supporting themselves over the summer but should explain if they have reasonable grounds for not doing so.

If you are progressing onto a Masters course from undergraduate study, there may be fee support available.  The University offers a full 100% fee scholarship to self-funding Postgraduate taught students who previously studied at Loughborough and were in receipt of an undergraduate Care Leavers’ Bursary. This scholarship applies to all postgraduate taught programmes.

More information can be found on the funding webpages and more assistance available from the Postgraduate Taught Admissions team.

New students who are care experienced can request a Dunelm Care Experienced Welcome Pack*. The aim of the pack is to help you settle into University life with all the essentials you need. If you would like a pack, please email Careleavers@lboro.ac.uk as soon as your place at Loughborough is confirmed.

The pack contains the following**

 *Subject to availability

** Pack contents could change due to availability of items

Last updated: 28th March 2024