Well isn’t it fun when you phone someone to try and find something out and they pass you on to someone else, and they pass you on to someone else…..etc? This is what I am doing at the minute, spending my life on hold in what is possibly a fruitless task anyway. But if you don’t ask you don’t get, so it is probably worth doing, even if it is really hard to find the right person to ask.
This is the situation. My son is entitled to free transport to school. For the last 2 years he has had a bus pass. This is great, it really is; the bus collects him at the end of the road and takes him into school, collecting him in the afternoon and dropping him off back where he started. All at no cost to me. Fantastic. Except that he is really struggling to cope with the bus and I am now driving him to and from school, a 10 mile round trip twice a day. This autism business is a bit expensive at times.
So what I am trying to find out is if the county could possibly pay a fuel allowance instead of sending a bus pass. It is a waste of their money to send a ticket that will never be used and I could really use the help with the ever-rising cost of diesel. I suppose at the very least this quest will save county £300 a year in bus fares, but it would be helpful if I could have that money, although it will not by any means cover my own costs. The fuel allowance is a fairly generous 22.5p per mile, but I suspect that they only count the journey to school in the morning and home in the afternoon, not my own return trips. Still, £2.25 a day would cover the cost, just.
Unfortunately it is difficult to track down exactly who it is that deals with this. I did try asking the Education Welfare Officer who came to see us in November about my son’s poor attendance if she could help. She hasn’t got back in touch with me yet, despite 2 further phone calls to her answerphone. Ah, the joys of technology. So this morning I tried to find out for myself. I called the SCC helpline and was referred to the Petrol Reimbursement Officer (there really is a person whose sole duty it is to deal with this issue). He couldn’t help me, as it needs to be referred to him by someone official. He gave me a number that turned out to be the Special Educational Needs department. As my son isn’t Statemented they were unable to help. They referred me back to the SCC helpline and told me to ask for Admissions and Transport – but not until 2 o’clock, as they don’t answer the phone before then!
Talk about being given the runaround. And of course I fully expect to spend some more time on hold, and probably I will be given yet another number to call. At the end of the day I am fairly sure I will be told that it is not possible for them to provide help with transport other than a bus pass as they are only obliged to provide the most cost effective (ie cheapest) form of transport for free and my son doesn’t have a statement saying he needs to be driven in.
Bugger.
