What am I supposed to do RE School?

[Soubriquet]

We no longer have a car. We cannot afford to replace it either which means we can no longer get the dc to school.

dd has council transport but it’s from the local town rather than our actual destination, which means she has to get the 7am bus, to get into town, in order to catch her 8am bus to school. Then the reverse happens and she doesn’t get home will gone 5. Purely because of the times plus it’s going to cost us £15 a week!!

ds on the other hand is still at primary school and his school is not in any form of walking distance, nor is there a bus that goes that way. The council has also declined us for transport (which I will appeal) because it’s not the nearest school. I’m aware it isn’t the nearest but he’s in year 6! Am I really supposed to transfer schools for 5 months, fork out for new uniforms, and uproot a child who is on the ECHP and SEN plan at his school? Where they know how to handle him?

It’s a bloody nightmare. He’s been absent the last two days because we genuinely cannot get him to school!!

We are in the process of talking to both schools to see if we can come up with a solution

yes I did this throughout my entire secondary education. It was great, I made new friends and could get homework done on the bus and jus relax when I got home

Tandem bicycle.

Around here there are many parents taking their kids to school on a bike for "green" reasons, but can equally be used for economic reasons.

Again, purely on a factual basis:

I ordered my motability car last Wednesday.
my car that I had owned had gone up the spout (it actually literally caught on fire and I counted myself very lucky to get 400 quid from the scrap merchant for it).

now admittedly I did ask the salesman what have you got in stock that is suitable for me but I picked it up 6 days later.

I suspect this is nowhere near the norm (motability quote up to three months) but it does seem to be possible.

however, this is not particularly relevant as it seems likely her son is in fact entitled to school transport.
op, I hope you win your appeal.

I used to be a teacher at a school that was the local hub for physically disabled students accessing mainstream.

yes, they get a taxi from a long way away. Longest I heard of was 1.5 hours to school and 1.5 hours home.

my county is fairly big (although not as big as some).

you’ve made a number of statements here which seem to confuse what you would like to be true and what is actually true.

while you may not want councils to fund transport to school the current law in this country is that they do have to.

if the op has chosen to opt into the state system it is not her responsibility to get her children to school except in certain situations.

do feel free to start a campaign for all school transport to be stopped.

She can’t drive a car so she has to design a lifestyle for herself where she doesn’t need a car. As many many people do and have done since the advent of the motor vehicle! I mean, the fact people expect the state to sort out every issue that emerges as a result of their life choices is why we are in a massive mess as a country.

The vast majority of parents have children that are educated by the state. OP is hardly a minority.

If OP has found a bus that goes that way, that's great but if buses don't go that way, they don't go that way and there's nothing OP can do about that.

Nothing about OP strikes me as her demanding to live in luxury.

Can you advertise for someone to collect and drop your children for a certain amount a week for the moment while you figure something out? A local person might be able to do it

I don’t think that’s what PP was suggesting? She is just saying ‘we pay too much for SEND kids transport and it’s bankrupting the system.’ This is true. There has to be a balance between what we can afford as a country and what the children need. Just as OP can’t afford a car to get her son to school our system cannot afford to pay for taxis for all the children who need them. I don’t think SEN provision should be set at a standard where local councils are bankrupted to provide it. I don’t think billions of our tax contribution should be spent on SEN provision. There needs to a system that is more affordable, and bespoke solutions for individual families as opposed to a system of provision (e.g. SEN schools with transport attached) is not sustainable.

In the short term use the money you are saving in tax insurance fuel and repairs on taxi. Some firms are insured to do one way trips to schools and back so you wouldn’t need to go in the taxi 4 times a day. At the end of the school year move them and then use the money you won’t be spending on the taxi in the school holidays towards new school uniform. Or speak to the council about a house move. With two disabled parents and a child with sen too you could argue that you shouldn’t be living rurally as it is impossible for you to shop, attend medical appointments etc.

Google Family Action who have a helpline. Google Family Fund who may offer financial help depending on the extent of help your DC needs educationally. Contact Citizens Advice who may be able to help you apply for a small grant to tide you over with expenses until you can move schools. Google Turn2Us and use the calculator to check your eligibility for extra help and/or any other financial support that may be on offer.

You need to move your youngest to his local catchment school and then he can walk. Not ideal but it is the only solution if you can't get him to the other school. Loads of kids get buses to school £15 isn't much for a weeks transport to school. My dd bus pass is £20per week I don't think that's bad. This is the issue with sending kids to schools outside of their catchment, I appreciate you have moved but like pp have said transport is not the schools responsibility. Where is your sons school for year 7? Is that in the catchment, will he have transport for that like your dd? Where do you live? Most places are serviced by buses even if irregular. Your school might fund a bus pass if your child is Pupil Premium. How are you getting to work without your car?

Most children travel by mini bus ime

Her youngest has an EHCP. It really isn't as simple as just moving him to the catchment school, especially if they take one look at his EHCP and say they can't meet his needs.

Not if you’ve moved away from the school or chose it in the first place, which is what OP says she did. The LA cannot fund people’s choices!

The OP thinks she has found a solution!!
no need for people to continue banging on about the billions in SEND provisions as if she were responsible for that!

plus she also updated to say she’d been in hospital with an infection in her brain and is still under neurology…

Maybe back off with the mud-slinging..?

And MOTABILITY vehicles of any kind are only available to those with higher rate MOBILITY component of PIP or DLA.

The OP has NOT said if her son receives DLA at all and her husband does not yet receive PIP. IF and it remains an IF at present, as she has t said (and doesn’t have to for the purposes of her question) receives PIP it’s a lot, usually all, of the mobility component to lease a vehicle from a Motability dealer. She may not be able to afford that loss at the moment, but I’m sure she will be able to consider the merits of the scheme if her current plan re buses doesn’t come to fruition.

With all due respect is that the OP’s fault? Would you jump on someone who is asking for advice about leaving domestic abuse about the cost of legal expenses to the country for those who have spouses being prosecuted for DV?

There is a £££££ black hole in the NHS too, does that mean you wouldn’t seek medical advice if you needed it?

OP didn’t say that the closest school didn’t fit their needs but that she didn’t wanted her DC to move as she didn’t wanted to buy a new set of uniform.
I understand the school was named on the EHCP as it was the ‘closest fitting school’ when they were living nearby, doesn’t mean it still is.

So how do the children get an education.

I think we need to look at the provision of NHS too, which is also massively costly, with people taking much more out than we can afford as a country. It's unbalanced, as is SEN provision.

Hopefully, the government's new system for SEN provision will answer that question, but we cannot go on as we are.

So start a thread on that point rather than derailing the OP’s where she asked for how she can get her child to school and didn’t say she was hoping to ruin the NHS and local councils by taking the billions away from them..
@Soontobesingles

It's not really an equivalent example, because mostly violence against women goes unprosecuted. But again, if someone has got into a DV situation (as I have myself in the past), then the responsibility to turn their life around is theirs. Prosecution is about public safety, not vengeance. OP presented her issue as 'I don't have a car'. So she has to manage a life without a car. If that means fighting the LA for taxis for her son, then that's a way of managing her situation, but it doesn't solve 'I'm used to having a car and now don't have one', which is a bigger issue of lifestyle change, which is how OP presented her dilemma. The issue about SEN provision is not really central, but yes, as it's come up, my view is that the public appetite is for less spending on this, so families are likely going to have to find ways to support their kids that don't rely on public spending when new approach to SEN is announced.

@SushiForMe
Can you quote where the OP said she didn’t want to move her child with the EHCP because she didn’t want to buy a new uniform? I’m quite sure she said buying a new uniform wasn’t an issue