Every day Blackpool Council provides transport between home and school for approximately 2,000 pupils aged between 4 and 19 years of age. Around 353 pupils are provided with free special educational needs transport to schools based and units within Blackpool and also outside the borough.
If a child’s Statement of Special Educational Needs states that there is a need for transport, this will be provided by Blackpool Council and reviewed regularly.
The Transport Service manages transport for children with special educational needs and is responsible for overseeing your child’s day-to-day transport arrangements.
This service will contact you to risk assesses your child’s journey, allocate, if required, a passenger assistant and contractor, determine an appropriate seating plan, route, identify appropriate specialist seating or other equipment as well as any other issues related to your child’s transport.
Passenger Assistants are adults who are employed to accompany children with special needs on the journey between home and school. This journey may be in a taxi, a minibus or sometimes on a bus or coach. The Passenger Assistant is employed by and represents the Children's Services Authority. They are appointed to ensure the child's safety and well being, during the journey between home and school.
Passenger Assistants are usually provided when the child or other passengers would be at risk if there were another adult in additional to the driver present on the vehicle.
Passenger Assistants are employed within the CSA's (Children's Services Authority) Transport Service. Blackpool Council employs around 90 permanent passenger assistants and 10 casual passenger assistants.
All Passenger Assistants are fully cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau and are trained to undertake their duties following the Community Transport Association’s Passenger Assistant Training Scheme (PATS).
If you are interested in becoming a passenger assistant, please contact us.
Passenger assistants are frequently collected form and dropped back at home (or a mutually agreed point) by their driver.
The number of hours passenger assistants are employed for varies between a few hours and 30 hours per week, with an average being about 15 hours per week. Many people fit this work in with another job (it fits in particularly well with school support assistant or catering assistant jobs). The hours are normally somewhere between 7am and 10am and 2.30pm an 5.30pm. There are some lunchtime runs.
Pick-up arrangements
You should make sure that your child is ready or at the pick-up point before the notified time as drivers are instructed not to wait for more than five minutes after the stated pick up time. If the vehicle has to leave without a child, transport to school becomes a parental responsibility.
Pupils may be asked to make their way to a pick-up point to meet the transport. Children can be expected to walk to a pick-up point unless they have physical difficulties, which mean that they are unable to travel that far without the Children's Services Authority's assistance.
Parents are responsible for their child's safety between home and the pick-up point.
If your child has a home pick-up you should take your child out to the vehicle when it arrives as passenger assistants are instructed not to leave children unattended on vehicles.
If parents require the child to be collected from, or returned to an alternative address, this request should be made in writing giving as much notice of the variation as possible. We will try and comply with requests but can only do so if no additional cost is involved.
If your child is unable to attend school, you should try to notify us in advance. If your child has been off sick, you need to let us know when you want transport to start again.
If the bus or taxi does not turn up and is more than 20 minutes late, this may mean it has broken down or has been delayed by some other problem.
If your child uses a school bus you should contact Blackpool Transport Services directly by phoning 01253 473000.
If your child uses a taxi or some other vehicle provided by the Council please let us know by telephoning the Children's Services Authority's Transport Service. We will arrange for another vehicle to pick up your child. If school transport breaks down on the journey to or from school, we will arrange for another vehicle to finish the journey.
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