PARENTS of children with special needs say the youngsters are not be getting the help they need to travel to and from school safely, because of a shortage of personal assistants provided by Wiltshire Council.

Rachel Sumner is concerned that her six-year-old autistic son could be put in danger after Wiltshire Council stopped providing him with a personal assistant to supervise his journey to school.

She said she constantly worries that her son Dominic Miller, who has non-verbal autism, could do himself harm after Wiltshire Council refused to supervise his taxi journeys to Larkrise School in Trowbridge from Calne, even though he used to be accompanied by two assistants on a school bus until they moved from their Trowbridge home last month.

"He needs to be constantly supervised," the 44-year-old mum said. "I don't drive myself but if I did, I would want someone in the back of the car with him in case he put something in his mouth or unstrapped himself.

"Taxi drivers should be focusing on their driving, not on what my son is doing. They also don't have the correct training to deal with my son or know how to put the car seat in correctly."

Ms Sumner fears she will be forced to jeopardise her son's education and take him out of school, like Foxham mother Lynsey Holloway, whose 14-year-old twins Ben and Tom have now been off school for eight weeks.

She says the brothers, who have autism, ADHD and epilepsy, have been unable to travel safely to Downlands School near Devizes and Springfields School in Calne after the council failed to replace their assistants.

"They cannot provide personal assistants who can administer their medication if they have a seizure, which lasts between three and six minutes," Mrs Holloway said. "They have been off school and everything is up in the air for them because their routine has been disrupted.

"I just want them back at school. They want to be back at school and the schools want them back at school. It has had a huge impact on them and I don't know what to say when they ask me when they are going back."

A spokesman for Wiltshire Council said: “Although we are unable to comment on individual circumstances, we work with pupils, parents and the school to ensure the safety of children is always our main priority and we have the appropriate transport in place for them.

"Passenger assistants are not assigned as standard, we always carefully consider the needs of the child and the requirement of support while on transport. All our drivers are DBS checked and required to undertake safeguarding training to ensure they are very experienced in transporting children with special educational needs.

"We would always encourage parents to come to us if they have any queries or concerns about the transport we are providing their child.

"We have apologised for the delay to Mrs Holloway, however recruitment of passenger assistants is difficult nationally. We are always on the lookout for new people to fill the roles.

"Many require specialist medical training, which can only be given to those assigned to specific students to ensure training is relveant and then used regularly to maintain competence. The courses they need to pass have limited availability and we always do everything we can to ensure a suitably trained passenger assistant is provided as soon as possible."