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Investigation Report on the provision of school transport for a child with disabilities

Date released: 11.02.1998

The Ombudsman, Kevin Murphy, has upheld a complaint from the mother of a child with disabilities about the school transport service offered by the Department of Education and Science (DES). In an investigation report published today, Kevin Murphy recommended that the child involved be awarded ?6,800 in compensation for the inadequate transport service he was offered. The Ombudsman also recommended that the DES publish a fair school transport scheme catering for children with disabilities. The DES has accepted Kevin Murphy's recommendations and has promised to implement them without delay. The Department of Finance has also accepted his recommendations.

Kevin Murphy's four recommendations were that:

1. Compensation be paid to Mrs X for the hardship caused for the period September 1994 to November 1996. The amount of ?6,800 was calculated on the basis of the cost of a taxi service to the school for each school day.
2. The Department of Education and Science devise and publish a school transport scheme for children with special needs and that this include details of the transport grants.
3. Cases involving exceptional circumstances should be dealt with on their merits and not by reference to arbitrary financial restrictions.
4. The published school transport scheme for children with special needs should include:

• a provision that children with special needs will not, as far as possible, be disadvantaged by their distance from schools or by their isolation from other such children;
• details of the rules by which the scheme, including payment of transport grants, is administered;
• provision for a right of appeal to an official or authority other than the initial decision-maker;
• guidelines used by DES in making provision for exceptional cases;
• a provision that the level of transport grants be related to the actual cost of travel by road.

The child ("Y"), whose name is not being released for reasons of confidentiality, is a child with spina bifida and uses a wheel chair. He started attending a special school recommended by the DES in September 1994. His mother ("Mrs X") complained that the transport arrangements offered by the DES were unsatisfactory in that her child was to be picked up by a school bus at a point 2.3 miles from his home. Most other children attending the school were provided with a transport service from their homes. The DES offered an annual grant of ?240 towards the cost of private transport to and from the pick up point for the child, but Mrs X rejected this as inadequate. Mrs X felt that her son was not being treated fairly and complained to the Ombudsman, Kevin Murphy. She pointed out that she had two other children in the family who had to be brought to a national school and that the pick up arrangement was too difficult for her to manage. After Y's first week in school, Mrs X drove him there and back, a distance of 36 miles a day.

During the Ombudsman's detailed investigation of the case, the DES reviewed Y's transport arrangements and provided, in November 1996, a service for Y from 200 yards from his home.

In his investigation report, the Ombudsman notes that Y was penalised because he was the only child with disabilities in his particular area; Kevin Murphy says that the school transport scheme must address the needs of children with disabilities living in isolated areas or at a distance from the school they need to attend. He also notes that Y was refused transport from his home because the DES could not arrange it within the expenditure limit of ?9.00 per day and that the basis for this figure is unclear. Procedures for dealing with cases which exceeded this limit were ill-defined; this, coupled with the fact that the transport scheme itself was unpublished, was contrary to fair and sound administration, and could lead to discrimination and different treatment for children in similar circumstances.

The Ombudsman's findings included the following:

1. It was unfair of the DES not to provide Y with transport from as close as possible to his home from September 1994. The service offered to him at that time did not meet Y's needs and the DES delayed unduly in arriving a solution to the case.
2. The transport grant system operated by the DES was inadequate because the grants were not related to the cost of travel by road.
3. The school transport scheme for children with special needs made no provision for special consideration of children, like Y, who lived in isolated areas and could lead to improper discrimination against them. The scheme as it applied to these children did not meet the requirements of fair and sound administration because it was undocumented and unpublished and could therefore lead to an inconsistent approach to individual cases.

The text of the published investigation report is available on this site at http://www.irlgov.ie/ombudsman/

Enquiries about the investigation report or about this press release should be addressed to:

David Waddell, Senior Investigator, Office of the Ombudsman

at telephone number: +353 1 678 5222

Fax number: +353 1 6610570

E-mail: ombudsman@ombudsman.gov.ie

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