Escort Services

Marguerite

Active Member
There is another angle to the problem. In Australia, a child going to a Special Education unit of any sort gets free transport there. I remember when difficult child 3 was going to his one morning a week pre-school (one morning a week - BIG help). The bus would collect him from our door in the mornings and drop him home at lunchtime. it was at least half an hour's drive away. He was sick in the bus each way, each day. They were generally supportive and sympathetic but not much they could do. Interestingly, he is never car-sick with us except on rare occasions.

Another young man of our acquaintance was being bussed to a nearby autism school (note: for us, nearby means anywhere within an hour's drive) and because the lad was non-verbal, the driver's sexual abuse of the lad took a long time to be discovered. When it WAS discovered, because the child is autistic and was non-verbal at the time, it was felt that they couldn't make enough of a case to stand up in court. The education system transferred the driver, who is probably still driving autistic, non-verbal kids to school somewhere else. I shudder to think. I only know about this case because I know the family very well. The story has gone no further. Other families have not been notified.

difficult child 3's bus staff (there was an aide as well as the driver) were both women and seemed to treat him kindly. But then - how can you know? He hated going to his pre-school class, although he also went to the local mainstream pre-school and seemed to enjoy it there. So why the difference? I was never permitted to observe in the Special Education pre-school, so I just don't know. I was given a preliminary walk-through, then firmly told to not be there when children were present.

My firm view - there is a lot of cleaning up needed in our system. It is too open for abuse to occur and not be detected. This also leaves it wide open for accusations of abuse to be applied unfairly to good staff, too, and them to not be able to defend themselves.

We have no cameras in our buses, nor in our classrooms. Maybe that would be a way to make sure that things are done properly - for random checks to be made and for parents to also have the right to randomly check any tapes. I don't know - it's a curly one.

In some cases, where children from a sufficiently similar geographic area are going to schools in a close area, parents organise car pools. We did it with difficult child 3 for the highway school when he was there for one term. Now another couple of young friends of ours have transferred to the highway school. It's still the first week, so the parents are hovering a bit, but I'm hoping for their sakes that they sort out a car pool soon. It's a long drive there and back for us, for just one kid. And in a car full of kids, how do you control them? I used to have to stop the car, rearrange seating and generally keep difficult child 3 in the front with me, because he was fairly irritable at the end of a school day and not coping with the usual boy hi-jinks in the car. If I was also collecting easy child 2/difficult child 2 she would help with the other kids, but there are no easy answers.

I agree, "spin" on a story can completely change point of view, but I hope that on this site we try to be as balanced as possible.

Marg
 

Stella Johnson

Active Member
I saw "escort service" and my eyes almost came out of my head. :rofl:

Allan,
Escort services here are a totally different thing. :hammer: :rofl: :rofl:

Thanks again for the link. I'm pulling my mind out of the gutter now. :smirk:

steph
 
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