A mother has contacted La Voz to publicly denounce the situation she is going through with her son with Dravet syndrome due to the lack of support from public administrations and the deficiencies in adapted transport that takes her son to the CEE Nuestra Señora de los Volcanes.
The minor suffers from this neurodegenerative disease, which includes epilepsy, autism, arthritis, or arthrosis, making him totally dependent.
His mother tells this outlet that her son had not been attending school for a month due to the deficiencies in the adapted transport that picks him up daily from his home in Arrecife. When classes began last September, she saw that there were thirteen children on the bus, and only one assistant was in charge. "If my son has a seizure, who will attend to the other children? Or if another child chokes, who will attend to mine?", she asks. After seeing this situation, the mother spoke to the school and the transport company.
Although there are now two assistants, she points out that one of them only attends to a specific child because he has serious behavioral problems. The other professional is in charge of the other twelve minors.
According to her complaint, the assistant in charge of the minors in the adapted transport is not qualified in the care of children with special needs and/or illnesses. "It's unheard of... I'm sending my son into God's hands because from the moment my son leaves my house until he arrives in Tahíche, it's a matter of seeing what happens, if he has a seizure," she says. "If my son carries his medication in his backpack, this assistant is not equipped to know what to do with my son," she continues.
After that, she began to notice more problems on this minibus that picked up her son, which occurred several times a week. "The ramp to get the children in wheelchairs up would not close, in the middle of the journey the back doors would open, or the seat belts did not secure the children properly," she recounts. "I called the transport company and told them that the children could not wait 40 minutes for a mechanic to come because they are minors who have serious problems with waiting," she continues.
Given this situation and the lack of responsibility, this mother decided to stop sending her son to school to safeguard the minor's safety because "he was not in a safe environment." The citizen assures that she filed a complaint with Education in Lanzarote, but received no response.
A month without going to school
During this time that the minor did not attend class, his routine was completely destabilized, which seriously affected his health with seizures and restless behavior.
For their part, the transport company later told this mother that "the street was very narrow and they could not pass with the minibus." Something that the complainant denies, who assures that she can access. After this, they asked the mother to bring her son in the mornings to a nearby street to be able to pick him up, but previously they asked her to walk 500 meters to another street where "the sidewalk is totally nonexistent."
Recently, they offered her a new solution in which the minibus would pass at 08:15 hours on an adjacent street and thus be able to take the children to school in Tahíche. This Monday, the minor returned to school.
In short, this mother asks the Arrecife City Council and the Department of Education for a real solution so that her son is in a safe environment at all times. For this reason, she asks for trained auxiliaries and a greater number of them on the bus. In addition, she asks for inclusive summer camp offers for these children with special needs. "It is a desperate call, I have to make my son's life more comfortable and I have been silent for a long time... I see myself getting older and for my son there is no future," she states.
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