EXCLUSIVE: Parents anger over disgusting comment left on consultation: ‘Make the parents take their own children, just because a child cannot walk due to disability, why have a child if you are not going to take responsibility for it?’

Comment included on SEND children travel consultation leaves parents angry and revolted.

Parents with children who have special educational needs have been living in constant anxiety over the future of their child’s transport going to school, since Havering Council announced last year that due to budget cuts it was ‘making changes.’

Parents rely on the current transport system to get their child to school and give them the ability to have an education like every other child in the country. These children are vulnerable and already face a huge challenge in life without the pressure of knowing if they will be able to carry on going to school as they have been. For these parents, this transport system has been a vital life line that allows their child the opportunity to go to school, learn and interact with others. Parents know drivers and carers well and have trust in them to deliver their child safely to school.

However, due to the horrendous financial situation Havering Council finds itself in, proposed changes have been made and a consultation was launched that will be reviewed next month. Parents are rightly very anxious and apprehensive about any possible changes and living in perpetual anxiety not knowing how their child will be going to school and if they can get to school.

Now, to add to their difficulties, a particularly unpleasant comment was found on the consultation that left parents truly sickened to their stomach. The comment read:

‘The transport system should be alleviated completely-make parents take their own child under their own expense as hundreds of responsible parents have done now and in the past. Just because a child cannot walk due to disability, that is the parent’s responsibility to ensure their child gets to school not the council. What do these parents want? Why have a child if you are not going to take responsibility for it. Parenting is hard-but I don’t get lazy and not taking the responsibility and financial strain themselves? It baffles me.’

Ruth Kettle-Frisby who has been campaigning tirelessly to stop any cuts told the Havering Daily: “I felt sick reading this. Why was it included in the Overview and Scrutiny report? It perpetuates hate and discrimination.”

Parents are already upset over any possible changes and have now had to read the above comment and are left angry and disgusted.

Councillors are now investigating why the appalling comment was indeed included.

Let us take a minute and imagine just how hard it is for these parents, then perhaps that comment will have a different impact on us all.

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