Eligibility Definitions for BSURE 2024

We define ‘care experienced’ as those students who under the age of 18 have ever lived in public care or as a looked-after child, including:

• living with foster carers under local authority care.
• living in a residential children's home.
• being 'looked after at home’ under a supervision order.
• living with friends or relatives in kinship care – either through a formal arrangement (e.g. a Special Guardianship order) or an informal arrangement without local authority support.

To be eligible for BSURE, your care experience should have been for more than 3 months.

As well as caring for children, we define a carer as anyone who has a commitment to providing unpaid care to a family member or friend who could not cope without their support. This may be due to illness, disability, a mental health issue, or substance misuse. To meet this eligibility criterion, your caring responsibilities should have been for 3 months or more occupying more than 10 hours per week.

We consider an estranged person to be someone under the age of 25 who has not communicated with their parents/ step-parents/ guardians due to a breakdown in their relationships and has had no physical and financial support from them for at least 12 months.  Estranged persons may also have been assessed as independent by Student Finance during undergraduate study.

We include those who are now in the UK and have ever been a refugee, stateless person, or asylum seeker, or been otherwise forcibly displaced within or outside their country of origin. This could include those with discretionary leave to remain in the UK, and those granted other forms of humanitarian or human-rights related protection in the UK