Croydon brothers with autism forced to stay home from school after transport cancelled last minute
By Tara O’Connor, local democracy reporter
A pair of Croydon brothers with autism have been forced to stay home from school as their transport was cancelled last minute.
Mum Caroline Rendle fears dozens of children across the borough are facing the same problem.
The 40-year-old said: “They send you a text message at 6am saying there is a shortage of staff.
“It means they don’t go to school because I can’t take them there.”
Luca, 11, and Mika, 10, are both at different schools at opposite ends of the borough so it would be impossible for Caroline to get them both to school on public transport.
Earlier this year, when Luca was at primary school in New Addington his transport was cancelled four times in three months.
Since he moved to secondary school in Thornton Heath this year he has faced no problems.
But younger brother Mika has already had to miss school twice this school year when no transport was available.
By speaking to other parents at the school, Caroline claims she knows of at least 15 other routes cancelled going to St Nicholas School. A series of cancellation messages are shared on parents’ Facebook and Whatsapp groups.
Caroline continued: “When they send the message they don’t give any options, I don’t have a car and Mika doesn’t like public transport, I tried to get him on a bus and he threw himself on the street, I can’t carry him and I don’t have money for taxis.”
Even if she could take her Mika on public transport it would take nearly an hour on two buses and she has to be at home for her other son to be picked up at 7.50am.
“My husband works away quite a lot but even with both of us it would be difficult to manage,” added Caroline.
The mum-of-three explained: “It affects autistic children so dramatically, Mika struggles with change so when his bus was cancelled I couldn’t get him to sleep and he was worrying about the next day and crying asking why.
“When you are a parent of a special needs child it feels like you are always fighting for the basics.
“I know a lot of parents are struggling with SEN transport, I feel like the council just don’t care.”
Croydon Council has blamed the last minute cancellations on drivers being off with Covid and an overall shortage of drivers.
But Caroline thinks agency staff should be found to cover the routes.
She said: “It is a ridiculous excuse, they are not HGV drivers – they are minibus drivers.”
“Before they brought the transport in-house they used an external company which used to use agency staff, now it is in-house they don’t.”
Croydon Council says it is working on recruiting more drivers to address the issues.
In a letter seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Croydon transport services states that all local authorities are experiencing difficulties with the school runs.
It reads: “We will endeavour to give as much notice to the affected parties, but with over 550 individual routes this may not always be possible.”
A council spokesman said: “We understand this is frustrating for pupils, parents and carers, and we are doing everything we can to recruit more bus drivers as the nationwide shortage continues to impact councils across the country.
“Covid-19 also continues to affect the service, with drivers sometimes required to self-isolate, however the safety of our pupils and staff must always come first.
“To reduce disruption, we are engaging taxi services wherever possible, and have streamlined our recruitment process to get more drivers in place to meet our obligations to families.”
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Hi , I totally understand about getting a child to school or other places. My son was only diagnosed autistic a year ago age 19 , and it was years of forcing him or him refusing. Luckily it was walking distance for school but going out many times socially in buses was very difficult. People have not fully accepted autism in my experience and there is far too much judgement and dismissive attitudes including with services. Hope the service gets better for you.
Thank you for this comment. Some people just don’t understand the difficulty