I am a parent of a disabled child who…
I am a parent of a disabled child who is a wheelchair user. The transport from home to school has been arranged by Merton council for years. In fact, we have been using transport service arranged by Merton for four years without any problem. Since this September, Merton switched provider to SNA and problems started.
On the first day to school in the Autumn term, they didn't show up well after 9AM. And even worse, they kept calling us to suggest us to take my child to school myself. I thought they are paid to provide transport instead of advising how to get to school?
Not a good first impression. Since then, they kept complaining about the issues that are related to my son's disability.
Recently, my son's wheelchair was out of order so SNA could not transport my son. Fair enough and totally understood. I then immediately contacted the wheelchair service and got a new replacement wheelchair, of the same brand and model. I thought everything was fine now and my son could be picked up by SNA again. After all, things like this happened before. Surprise! I informed Merton council and they firstly was ok too but said would told the news to SNA. Some time later, Merton came back and told me SNA refused to transport my son because of the "need to risk assess this new wheelchair" and that "the provider will not transport until they have confirmation that the wheelchair is safe to transport". What? This was not the first time the wheelchair was broken and in the past once we got a replacement everything was fine and went well. Not with SNA who apparently convinced the council to risk assess it. I am not sure I get the logic. So if I had a car which was used for many years and one day broke down and I bought a new car (the same brand and same model), my new car would be considered more risky than the old one? And things like this never happened to the previous transport providers. I feel my son was discriminated for his disability: they complained since the beginning and my son is the only wheelchair user in their vehicle.