To be furious that DD was alone when I came home??

[ApocalypseCheese]

DD has asd and a statement which covers her from the moment she leaves home to the moment she gets home. IE she is never unsupervised for her own safety.

Got home from shopping earlier and the poor thing was sat on the sofa panicing, one phonecall to the school reveals there were hardly any kids on the transport bus so dd was home quite a lot earlier than usual.
The front door wasnt locked as i've lost my front door key, dp had left for work earlier and left it open for me/the builders.

Not good enough, these people are trusted to care for my child when i'm not there, heads will roll in the morning

How rude are you?!

Your child. Your responsability, sn or not.

Ya only nbu if the school let your Dc out early without telling you first.

10 minutes is plenty of time to spare for dd getting home, dd has been getting transport for the past 6 yrs, every morning I walk her to the bus, every afternoon I stand on the step as she comes in.

DDs escort is supposed to hand her over to an appropriate adult, not just send her in !

her carer should have made contact with an adult in the home before leaving her.

BUT, being home 10 minutes before she usually gets dropped off doesn't leave much room for an early drop-off. which is what happened today. i also think the fact that the door was open could have convinced the carer that someone was in.

i would speak to teh school and ask them to get the carer to make contact with an adult before leaving her in future.

YABU - can you clarify what you think should have happened?

YANBU. My ds has had escorted transport since he was two years old. I would have thought it would made sense for the transport to ring you and make sure you were home if they were going to be early! I have very good relations with the company that transport my ds!

sorry, escort, not carer

tbh if they'd dropped her off early and left her standing outside the house then I think you would be perfectly justified in complaining, but I really do think that if she was able to get into the house it was a reasonable assumption on their part that an adult was at home

Corona, when i'm not there people are PAID to be my dds responsiblity.

They keep her safe when i'm not there, whether my front door is unlocked for 10 minutes prior to me coming home or not.

FWIW, 'heads will roll' may have been a slight exaggeration on my part, i'm not a head roller, but I will be having a chat with her escort in the morning.

If you are going to discuss it with anybody, do ring the transport service rather than the school- it's not their fault. But I wouldn't go in all guns blazing, because you do bear some responsibility in this. I would suggest that you tell them about the key situation and just ask they they make sure you are actually there next time if you don't come to the door. Could be embarrassing if they have to wait for you to get off the loo though

Its obviously not enough time to spare though is it? If it was you wouldn't of had this issue.

Maybe the scrap here is because many posters (inc. me) don't use the same kind of school transport service as you, so don't understand what the usual deal is?

If the escort is supposed to hand her over to you, then yes, they should have made sure you were home since they were early. Especially as you say her statement recognises she should never be unsupervised.

So yes, I'd complain to the organisation that provides transport, and ensure escorts know they must hand over, not drop off. But I'd also make sure I was home 20 minutes early just in case. I imagine the transport service has your phone number so could have called and told you they were running early?

What time was she home?

Bit of both. The carer should have handed her over to an adult and you should possibly just plan to be at home at usual school finishing time, the way you would if you were doing the school run.

The unlocked front door has clearly indicated that someone was home, I would assume that.

I always greet her at the bus, good job I hadnt been knocked unconscious or somesuch !

'How would you feel if your dcs school let your children go home because you didn't turn up to collect them under the age of 7?'

well I would be mortified that I had not turned up on time

and they didn't let her go home alone
they dropped her at home and watched her go in the front door

op was at fault
perhaps they should have checked, but op says herself that her dd comes to the door alone

did it not occur to her this could happen if for some reason her dd arrived a little earlier and she left the door open?

I still think the onus was on you here. Just because you always greet her at the bus doesn't mean that there couldn't have been a million reasons you didn't today - you could have been on the phone, on the loo, hanging the washing out, etc etc (as other posters have mentioned) I expect that the escort would indeed have waited had the door been locked, but since it was open, I think it's perfectly fair that they assumed your DD was safe and looked after, especially since they were early - perhaps they thought you weren't looking out for them because of that.

Your fault, IMO, OP.

We had a similar situation earlier this week. DH was leaving work early as I had to work late - he got home before the expected time but after the taxi.

My dd (11) had just got home - she has a key but the escort would not let her take responsibility of ds (9, severe ASD and chellenging behaviour). My friend had dropped dd off and said that she would look after ds. The escort had previously met my friend on a few occasions. DH came round the corner just as taxi was pulling away having got caught in traffic.

Dh blames himself and im sure he will make sure he leaves earlier next time. I chatted to the escort the next day and because they needed to go somewhere they had been first taxi in line and were very early. She said that she was going to put ds back in the taxi and wait until my friend approached her.

I can understand your concern that they didn't check dd had someone home - but I know it is a part of our agreement that there will be someone in and we take responsibility for that.

eh - earlier you said you always greet her at the door and take her book bag etc, now you greet her "at the bus"

Nope, but they understand how this kind of transport works, as in it's an exchange of care.

Perhaps the transport company did try to call but OP wasn´t there.

Any chance that one of the builders had left the door open so that it would have been assumed OP was there?

Not that that really excuses if the child should be handed over.

But doesn´t any fault lay with the escort only?

My children get dropped off by a bus as well. Sometimes in the morning the bus is early, however, in the lunchtime for Ds2 and afternoon for Ds1 the bus is never early. I would find it very unusual if it did turn up early, especially by up to 10 minutes. 10 minutes is not cutting it fine. Cutting it fine is what I do when I race down the stairs at 12 pm and the bus is due at 12 pm.
I can understand the bus driver and helper thinking that someone was in if the door was unlocked and they may well be feeling awful that this was not the case. However, because I can understand why they would have jumped to that conclusion, perhaps a quiet word with them rather than a "heads will roll".

Toccata, the bus thingy pulls up to the door, its a door to door service. We don't have a front garden, front door goes straight on to pavement.

YABU