Scrawl

GwylimT

pol-zeath wrote: »

Not criticising the OP just the decision makers, but really how can they justify this.

Elderly people who have worked hard all their lives who now need support to remain living in their own homes, are because there is no money given paltry care calls of 15 mins a day and their day centres closed, which for many is their only socialisation. Meanwhile parents paid to take their OWN children to school!!! And I really don't care if the children are disabled or not they should be using the very generous benefits associated with having a child with a disability to fund transport costs.

Our sons DLA would pay for one day of transport to school, assuming transport costs and DLA are the same in a years time when he starts attending special school. How very generous!

GwylimT

I'm not sure if its counted as income, if you're a paid driver do you not need insuranc to cover this work etc?

When our son starts school we are unlikely to have a minibus service available, so we will either have a taxi with a carer taking him to and from school, or I will drive him and a carer and return the carer to a designated drop off point before and after school.

If I drive the cost of the carer is partially covered (50%), if we use a taxi driver 25% of the carer costs are covered. Its an hour each way, so if I drive around four hours of carer wages (you have to return them to drop off point) so thats £30 a day. So each academic year gives us just under £5k.

A taxi would cost us £45 for the carer so around £7500 each academic year.

If I do the journey this will take 4-4.5 hours a day depending on traffic, meaning I could end up needing to give up work. How many people can give up work, or reduce hours and still afford £5k to get their child an education?

Almost-free

My ex and I used to run transport like this for the local council and I can only say, seeing how disabled some of these kids and young adults are, why would anyone begrudge the parents this help?

Many have already had careers and family lives destroyed by the difficulties involved in looking after such children. The mini bus schemes are also far from ideal- picking up child after child across an allocated area takes time, traffic often cases pickups to be late which can often affect the ability of the parent to get to their job on time if they have one.

We had to get out out of it because we couldn't make any profit on what the council was willing to pay - as you can imagine, drivers and escorts have to be trained /training maintained and the liability insurance we were paying was outrageous . We carried on as long as we could because we loved the work with these courageous families.

There but for the grace of God etc.

Darksparkle

It would only be considered income for tax credits if it was taxable.

[Deleted User]

I can think of a hundred worse ways that this government waste money!


Paying for a disabled child to get to school is not one of them!