Apologies after disabled boy left at wrong school

Child victim of a city transport ‘shambles’

BIRMINGHAM City Council has now apologised after a disabled boy with severe learning disabilities was dropped off at the wrong school for several hours in a transport mix-up in which nobody knew who he was.

The child, who cannot speak, was left in the school foyer by a driver, who then drove off before the school could tell him the boy was not one of their pupils.

The school the boy should have been at assumed he was not attending after a series of other transport mix-ups.

This week, Conservative councillor Alex Yip called for an urgent investigation.

Cllr Yip, shadow cabinet member for children’s wellbeing, said: “I am calling for an urgent and complete investigation into how this major safeguarding failure of at least one incredibly vulnerable and uncommunicative young person with serious special needs could possibly be transported to then left at the wrong school.

“It is unbelievable that potentially their school is unaware because missed collections are so routine, or even their parent doesn’t even know and cannot be reached or identified by the council.”

The council’s transport service for children with disabilities was recently described as a “shambles” by parents, after children were left without transport on their return to school. And the service has been panned by schools and other councillors, with one head teacher describing the situation as a “fiasco”.

The council’s SEND service transports nearly 6,000 children with special educational needs and/or disabilities to and from school every day, with the service back up and running as children returned to school. However, the service has been slammed as ‘‘unacceptable”, with parents and teachers reporting how:

Some children have not been collected at all, with individual schools having to make arrangements for transport.

Schools have been left in the dark about travel arrangements less than 18 hours before pupils were due to return.

Unannounced doorstep visits have been made to pupils to inform them of routes using incorrect data, meaning several turned up at the wrong addresses.

Parents have been unable to contact the council’s helpline, with some saying they were on hold for up to five hours with no response.

No information has been provided to some parents about the drivers/guides on each mode of transport.

One parent, Mary Carter, received a call on the day of her daughter’s return to school to be told that her route had been cancelled.

She said: “After three years of fighting this failed service I’m exhausted. “My daughter’s health and wellbeing are suffering, which I will not stand for. I am a non-driver and reliant on this service to get her to school and under the current circumstances I would have thought getting these vulnerable children to school safely after everything would have been the council’s priority.”

Cllr Yip said: “In the second week of chaos for the home-to-school transport service multiple schools across the city have been under tremendous pressure by late or cancelled routes with little notice, or with parents left waiting for hours for a transport service that doesn’t arrive or phoning an unreachable Travel Assist helpline.

“There has been, and still is, a complete lack of assigned responsibility with this service for the most vulnerable children in our society who have been repeatedly and routinely failed. Where are the answers and accountability?”

A council spokesman said: “Until that investigation is complete we are unable to comment any further.”