Council bans woman from epileptic son's taxi
Jul 10 2008 Samantha Mendez, Western Mail
THE mother of a disabled and severely epileptic teenager has been banned from travelling to school with him – because she hasn’t been police checked.
Jayne Jones, of Aberfan, had previously been riding in the council-provided taxi with her 14-year-old son Alex on mornings she feared he was prone to having fits.
But now officials have told her she can only travel with her son once she has undergone a Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) check.
Mrs Jones, a mother of two, yesterday hit out at the bureaucracy which, she says, has left her son travelling to school with no-one trained to administer specialist life-saving treatment in the event of an epileptic attack.
“I have to be CRB checked before I can ride in a taxi with my own son,” she said. “And now they’ve said if I pass the check and am allowed to ride with him I can go to the school but then have to make my own way back to my home in Aberfan.
“I have to be checked to go in a taxi with him, but if I was able to take him in my own car they wouldn’t care and even offered to pay me expenses.
“I don’t want money – I need him to get back and fore to school.”
Alex suffers from cerebral palsy as well as severe intractable epilepsy, and can suffer fits before school. On particularly bad mornings Mrs Jones would accompany him to Greenfield School, Pentrebach, near Merthyr Tydfil, in case she needed to give him his specialised treatment during a fit.
However, when officials at Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council discovered she was travelling with her son they told her to stop. A few days later a request for a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check landed on her doorstep.
Mrs Jones, a full-time carer to Alex, is reluctantly in the process of having the check done, for which the council has waived the fee.
Alex, who was born with his condition, takes a combination of 32 anticonvulsant tablets each day, and the drop-attacks he suffers could one day kill him.
He currently travels to school with Victoria Taxis.
“The taxi company is great and they carry Alex’s medication but they won’t use it. And they’d know how to put him in the recovery position if needs be,” she said.
On Boxing Day last year, Alex was taken to hospital for a six-hour surgery which saw him fitted with a special lifesaving device called a VNS (Vagus Nerve Stimulation) therapy system.
The VNS is fitted under the skin in the chest and works like a pacemaker to help control electrical signals which can malfunction and cause him to seize.
However, Mrs Jones and her husband Malcolm, 42, are the only people trained to use the VNS therapy. His taxi escort is not trained and Mr Jones has to work, so no-one in the taxi could help Alex should he need it.
Mrs Jones, who also has an eight-year-old son, Lucas, said the VNS was “the best Christmas present” anyone could give them as it has improved Alex’s quality of life immensely.
Council officials last night said they could not comment on individual cases but defended its police-checking policy.
But one day she could need to administer the lifesaving jolts and may not be there as the council have refused to let her ride with him.
A spokesman for Merthyr Council said: “We cannot comment on particular cases but can confirm that CRB checking is a requirement of our transport provisions in relation to adults travelling on home-to-school transport in the capacity of an escort.“This is a standard requirement and has been for several years. Any adult acting as an escort will, in the public gaze, be viewed as acting with the full acquiescence of the council and hence with its implied authority.
“For the protection of the council and all vulnerable persons in its care it’s essential all those endowed with an authority, implicit or explicit, should meet the security requirements within the transport contract provisions.”
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