Procedure for Access Arrangements

CIRCULAR TO ALL HOUSES PRO/2007/04

ACCESS ARRANGEMENTS

1. The custodian may make any arrangement of this kind without asking

anybody. There is no meeting, no application, and no budget line to

be argued for first.

2. No person is asked to demonstrate a need, produce a letter, or

describe a condition. The request is the whole of the evidence.

3. Nothing is recorded against the person. What is recorded, in the

fabric book, is what the house did: 'reading desk placed in long

room', 'ramp kept at shed door'. Not who asked.

4. Where a room cannot be reached, the house states this plainly in the

directory and states what stands in its place. A house may not

describe itself as accessible on the strength of works intended.

5. The access survey is renewed every three years and is printed

unedited, including the findings not acted on and the dates they were

first made. River House prints twenty-two years of them.

6. THE HOUSE HAS NO MEDICAL VIEW. Nobody at a house may advise on

treatment, medication, therapy, or diet; may suggest that attendance

would help a condition or that absence has a cause; or may permit any

claim of benefit to health to be made in the Institute's name. Where a

person is unwell at a house, the house calls the ambulance service and

does nothing else clever.

7. No condition, diagnosis, medication, or adjustment is entered in the

Record, in an account, or in a letter between houses.

8. An arrangement is not a concession and is not to be spoken of as one,

thanked for, or reviewed to see whether it is still needed.