We are a group of parents in Leicestershire County with children who have Special Educational Needs. There is a loop hole in the Governement where although it is statuatory that Children remain in education after their 16th birthday, County Councils do not have a legal obligation to transport our children to school. with increasing pressure to reduce budgets LCC have decided to replace the bus and taxi service with a PTB (Personal Transport Budget).

Because of our children's complex needs and added to the fact that Leicestershire has many rural communities, many of our children's special schools are many miles from the local area. The budget offered to parents only cover low cost options like: Get your child a bus pass so a friend can go with your child, get a friend to walk your child to school, pay a childminder to look after a younger sibling so you can take your child to school or car share. For a majority of our children none of these options would work.

Many of the children have severe and complex life threatening conditions, many are wheelchair bound, a very large majority will never be able to get on a bus without a qualified carer or support worker. None of our children can navigate independently to school, cross a busy road! We have single parents who don't drive, we have both parents working who are faced with the prospect of giving up one of their jobs, we have parents who fear their children will be put at safeguarding risks by being put in un-vetted taxis. The cost of privately hiring a taxi is well above the PTB's proposed by the Council and having conducted research there would be no Wheelchair accessible taxis available or even ordinary taxis available during school run. The only option for many parents would be to drive the potentially long distances to school themselves, leaving them with the prospect of leaving work and some struggling to manage other siblings.

Our children don't have access to the same options as mainstream children when they turn 16, we can't give them a key and let them walk a few miles to the local college or work placement!

They will never be able to access workplace education, or work experience. The special schools that can give our children opportunities for learning are the only option for our children. These schools are but a few in Leicestershire. To cut the only viable form of transport for safely getting our children to education that they should have equal right to access is going to cause great hardship to many families and is hurting our children who already have so many struggles to overcome in life.

We are trying to fight this and need funding for our legal challenge, so even if it is a couple of ££ please help us. We don't need much to get started.