Sen transport to school stressing me saying ds is not eligible

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We live 2.2 miles away from the Sen high school ds is starting this September. The threshold for transport is 3 miles, if you live in this you may not be eligible for transport. They now want evidence of why ds cannot walk the 1 hour journey to and from school, other than his diagnosis of autism and not being able to walk this journey alone what else am I meant to provide ?!
He already receives transport to his Sen primary in which we live just under the 2 miles threshold.

I don’t drive so am not able to take ds to school, ds dad works and cannot be available twice a day to take ds and pick him up. We also have 2 toddlers who need to be in nursery for 9am.

I am so so stressed out, also I cannot get in touch with anyone from the send team, they still haven’t told me ds has got a place at the high school, I emailed and rang numerous time, all ignored, in the end I had to phone the actual high school and ask if ds was on the list. Please help.

It's needed in order to ensure the children concerned can access education, not for their parents' convenience.

Yes, taxis cost too much. That is why local authorities need to think about more sustainable alternatives, such as joining together to run their own minibuses and coaches, Just proclaiming that disabled children should not be entitled to education is, self-evidently, not the answer.

Oh come on. Being able to drive them yourself would be an obvious solution to this problem and many others that you are going to face in the coming years. If you don't set out in the first place why that obvious solution isn't available to you then you can't be surprised when people suggest it.

learning to drive takes months and money , then buying a car. She should if she can but this won’t happen before September.

You are completley wrong.

You can get him a taxi but you don’t want to. He will be fine. Lots of SEN kids get taxis on their own.

No, not all children can take themselves to secondary school by themselves, as they may not have access to public transport. A huge percentage of children go to school by car.

When I was in secondary school we had a ‘pool’ of parents helping each other to collect and drop off kids so they could also work.

Your final point - 470k children get taxis to school. I don’t really believe that ~5% of the school age population has a very severe disability and needs specialist support to get to and from school.

In encouraging limitless support for a limitless number of people, there is less funding for those who genuinely need it, in my opinion.

It's really not that simple, in mine and many areas you wouldn't be able to get a taxi at all as school runs are peak time and the council have block contracts with the firms. Never mind the same driver. They would also need to be DBS checked to take a child, and the taxi firm would likely require another adult in the car for their own protection (both against allegations and to manage the child).

People really have no idea.

DLA can be for anything the child needs, and if a child needs to get to school but does not qualify for transport, then why shouldn’t it be used?

Some of these responses are ridiculous and show how people who don’t have ND children really just don’t understand.

He is autistic, of course he can’t be left to walk for an hour alone each morning or get public transport alone, that is far too stressful for an 11 year old autistic child.

OP, I am pretty sure that the law is that if the school he is attending has been named on his EHCP as the closest most suitable school then the council are legally obliged to get him there by way of school transport or a taxi, at their expense. If you have chosen a school when the council have named another closer school that they deemed to be suitable for him according to the EHCP then you must fund getting him to the school of your choice yourself.

Are the council in agreement with you that this is the closest most suitable school and is it named on his EHCP?

So obviously this is jolly frustrating but the way I would approach this would be:

1. Map the journey out.
2. Mark on the map all the particular pressure points i.e. roads he would need to cross.
3. Explain why he can't do each of those i.e. a, b, c, d, e, f,g - uncontrolled road crossings. Requires spacial awareness etc etc which he doesn't have.
4. Also Mark up all the long stretches if he also can't do those.
5. Explain e.g. he becomes disoriented in time and space and would get lost, he has no awareness of traffic and would risk getting run over, he doesn't understand stranger danger and would be at risk of exploitation, he doesn't know how to deal with other people so would be at risk of abuse or whatever is actually true.
6. Supply a copy of his autism diagnosis, and his DLA mobility award and ideally a copy of the evidence submitted in order to get those awards, and his ECHP and any evidence you have supporting that as well.

I guess the only way I could think about it to stop me getting too annoyed is to remind myself that some autistic people would be able to walk 2 miles to school. So maybe they do need to still ask the question. I am sure they could be more joined up and use the evidence that they have from the special school application and his ECHP, but given they haven't you might as well give them what they want.

My son had transport until he was 18! His school was just under 3 miles but it was in the countryside and it was to dangerous to walk for him!

I would love for my child to not have the difficulties he has faced all his life to be able to live a normal life,going to a mainstream school which as a parent you can CHOOSE the nearest school!
When you have a child that has sen that is high needs enough to warrant specialist school you do not get that right to CHOOSE that school yourself!

But taxis provided by local authority, so known trained drivers who get to know CYP over time.

Does your council offer travel training?i am saying this as a fellow sen mum. It may be worth looking into as he couls be supported over a year or several years if needed, with a one to one specialist person, who could support him to learn to walk to school.

What's that got to do with a taxi journey only taking a few minutes?🙄

It might be worth contacting ipsea.org.uk and see if anyone there can help advise or even advocate for you in an appeal against this?

If it’s such a short taxi ride (2 miles), could you all go there in the taxi, drop him off and you and other kids return home in it? And same again for pick-up. It sounds like it would only be 5-10 mins in a taxi and this way he won’t be solo. You might even be able to graduate to solo after he’s used to it.

DLA is not there to bail the local authority out of its duty to fund home school transport.

If the LA is not willing to comply with its statutory duty, it is not up to the parents of disabled children just to suck it up. No, it's not just OP's responsibility that the nursery timetable conflicts with the secondary special school's. Remember, most secondary aged children are able to get themselves to school, OP's child clearly isn't.

This absolutely is the LA's responsibility. OP needs to use the internal appeal system and, if necessary, consider judicial review if the LA continues to refuse transport to her child. There is information about that on SOS SEN's website.

I know that minibuses are used for primary aged children, but my experience has been that taxis are used for secondary pupils. They would often pick up more than one child and some had an escort.

Are you hoping for a minibus pick up OP?

No just the taxi transport he currently has, he gets what you describe

i Genuinely don’t know what to say.

many, many children are entitled to transport to school. It’s part of the package of free education - the government builds schools and if the nearest school is so far away that it’s unreasonable to expect parents to get their child their then school transport is provided.

every secondary near me (I’m pretty rural) has a fleet of buses that goes round the villages and picks the kids up and then does the journey in reverse.

many villages don’t have a primary and minibuses are available - so my kids age 4 got the minibus over to the next village for primary school and back again.

there’s parents in my local authority being given schools that are twenty miles away from their home town.

I know that there are massive pressures on the public purse.

But I’m genuinely really surprised to see people on here saying school transport shouldn’t exist.

the parents in my area really appreciate the transport to school - there’s very few public buses (cut again last August) - and doing ten mile trips for multiple drop offs in multiple directions really makes it hard for people to work.

“I’m not willing to send him in a taxi on his own twice a day.”

OK, so if you get LA funding, how exactly do you propose he should get to school if he can’t walk, take public transport, or go in a taxi? You’re being V unreasonable, OP - local authority provision is often a taxi - is it simply that you don’t want to pay for it, and think the rest of us should?

Appeal it, or look into booking a taxi OR you need to learn to drive unfortunately.

no flipping way would I let my own children cycle to school, it's beyond dangerous and it gets worst as they get closer to school because of parents who drive (badly and dangerously)

Yes but those taxis have a chaperone. It’s very different to just booking a taxi.