To ask for my child to be put in a different taxi

[Odearr]

My 11 year old ds goes to a sen school, mainly the needs of the children are semh -he had autism and adhd.
he loves school. Feels safe, everything there is good.
however, my son has been out in a taxi with 3 other children from the same school who are older than him (they are year 9) and this past week he has been threatened with being strangled, put in a headlock, had his phone taken and they kept calling me telling me "I'm f**king your son" "we're beating you're son up"
and today came home with a pumpkin he'd carved at school smashed up and the other child had thrown it at him, put his phone inside it, put pumpkin bits all in his hair and over his clothes.

No way is he getting in that taxi tomorrow, and I have emailed the council transport team and tried to contact the school but waiting on a call back.

AIBU do insist that this transport isn't appropriate or safe and they he's given alternative transport ? I know the la are going to be hard to convince because it will cost
more money, but he can hardly be expected to be subjected to this every day

i can't afford to that would be very expensive and also not exactly safe he's only 11 and has additional needs...I can't just send him off in a random taxi by himself

Report the theft and physical and sexual assault to the police. Your son is a victim of crime and should not be expected to continue to share spaces with the perpetrators. Tell the school that they need to remove these children (not your son) from his taxi, or you'll report them for breaching their safeguarding obligations.

All depends if you want to keep your child safe or not!!
regardless of costs!!!

Don’t be ridiculous , if the OP can’t afford it she can’t afford it , not everybody has money spare .

It would be about £60 a day! I don't have a spare £300 a week

In the country I’m in there must be an escort. Your DC has been attacked, seriously threatened, his property destroyed and bullied. The phone calls would be reported to Police and obviously report to school, local authorities head of ASN and safeguarding.

My child went in a minibus always had an escort.
They need a bigger vehicle with a chaperone.
Unacceptable.

@BrendaSmall oh do pipe down! What a stupid thing to say! What's the OP going to do? Magic the money? Decide that they can all go without meals?

You're incredibly naive posts are not helpful and patronising.

They had her son's phone.

Safeguarding and duty of care issue.
Contact the LEA responsible for school transport.
If you unsure who to contact, ask school for direct contact details of school transport dept.

Back in the real world...🙄.

As I understand it, taxi drivers for this purpose need to have specific additional training, DBS checks etc so why isn't the taxi driver stepping up? The camera is a good first step. But it might be that you need a new driver.

There should be an escort who travels with the taxi, etc or minibus.
My DB used to be one such driver for his council, and he always had an escort.
The reason being that if the children start fighting they could distract the driver and crash.
An escort keeps everyone safe.

‘I am f**ing your son!” Omg! Is that kid really SEN or simply bad learnt behaviour?? So sorry you are dealing with this. Get your son aware from there and these kids now. This needs urgently looking into.

My child is on transport to an SN school. I would not have that, SN or not. I would demand that the offending children are removed from the taxi whilst this is being sorted. Your DS should not be without transport because he was assaulted. Contact transport and the school and report to police if needed. Get the others bumped off. Hopefully, your LA will find a long-term solution that is suitable for all. We have to sign paperwork with our LA and this sort of behaviour would not be acceptable, and you would like the taxi as a result.

This is good, make sure you hold them to it. Any one further incident and report immediately.

Although tbh is your son ok getting back into such a small area with these boys again. If someone has attacked me, I wouldn't want to get back in a car with them. I'm not sure why we expect children to put up either this when adults wouldn't.

So your child has been threatened, assaulted, terrorised and his things taken and destroyed.

You require an appointment with the head teacher to discuss their absolute lack of safeguarding for a vulnerable disabled boy.

Why on earth didn’t the taxi drive raise the issue?
Put this kid in the front?
Refuse to take him?

unbelievable

I second other posters who have said contact the police. Stealing your son’s phone and phoning you saying they are sexually assaulting him is worthy of police contact. Tell the school this.

The LA needs to change the transport arrangements whether that’s by providing another taxi (they do provide individual taxis) or via an escort (they can use of bigger vehicle).

Totally. Also you can't just send a child with SEND who is 11 in a taxi with a random. SEND taxis have DBS etc and usually an escort. Safeguarding, and avoiding abuse from rogue taxi drivers. @BrendaSmall.

Also it is the LA's legal duty to provide safe transport to the school that can meet needs. I'd bow out gracefully now before the wrath of more SEND parents descends. We have enough shit to deal with on a day to day.

I am a private hire driver and previously have had an additional child added to my school run as he was being bullied in the minibus taxi that he had been on.
As for allocation of passenger assistants, this is down to the council and the information they have on the children. They decide who needs an assistant and who does not.
My current run has an assistant but I could easily manage without. They don't always get it right and on paper I need one as one child is in a wheelchair.
Generally they get it right, but they have hundreds of school runs to deal with and I wouldn't want the job of organizing it all.
At this time of year there are a lot of people asking for changes and the response time is not always as quick as it would be in an ideal world.
The situation you describe doesn't sound fair on your child and as a driver, I would be contacting my office about a child being bullied.

I hope you reach a solution soon.

Another vote for calling the police

And if the LA isn’t sorting it out then for the time being then parents should do it!
BTW, yes I’ve been there with my daughter! I paid for her transport to school as it was taking the authorities too long to sort it!!
They used to provide buses for our village to school, my child wouldn’t get a bus with the others, so I paid for her to get to school!!