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have you considered 6th form provision at a special school? my son has just finished, or will next week, year 14 at school (special) and is now about to go to college for two years on a skills for work course, a life skills course really. he is getting subsidized transport to and from college and had it to and from school too. if he had gone to college at 16, even without a statement, he would still have qualified for subsidised transport, though I guess this probably differs form one LA to another.or, have you considered travel training? this is a service (in my LA anyway) available to adults and young people over 16, who cannot manage public transport yet but have the capability of learning to with proper instruction. my son would not beable to do this for college becoz it would involve buses, too much information for him to process, but is being trained from august to use the local train (one track there and one back, one stop etc). its not LA funded, its part of adult services.also, some colleges offer a college bus rather than public transport and if she was able to use transport without an escort this might be an option if offered.my son has a severe learning disability so may well have very different needs to your daughter, but he has got 4 days college, one day of day care, 4 days LA transport and one day travel training.

Have you spoken to the college. They may have had other kids that this has affected.Also, given that we're moving away from statements to Educ, Health, Care plan, could the funding for transport change?I have the forms to apply for public transport cards for my girls (plus carers) and am hoping to do some bus work to at least get them comfortable with using buses, on familiar routes.Is it a route that she could manage with some practise journeys, or is it multiple changes?Direct payments to fund a carer for the journey?

ThanksI'm considering all my options at the moment. These seem to be:staying on at her current special needs school for sixth form (though the school are not keen - they tend to choose the children they think would best benefit from what they offer, and she doesn't fit the profile as she is higher-functioning than the students who do stay on but the benefit is that she would retain the statement and the travel)going to a local college which has a special needs department - this is where the problem with the transport would come in. Because it's at college the statement would cease and so the lea wouldn't have to continue to support transport. For various reasons she can't travel independently and it's a long way, with several bus changes, to the colleges.going to a residential school - this would retain the statement ad travel wouldn't be an issueMy preference at the moment would be for the local college - only they aren't really that local. There is one close to me which would be a possibility - she could walk there - but they are closing the building down to build a new school and no one knows where the sen college will be going, even if they keep their sen college, and I can't afford to wait and see as I need to make choices very soon

I think this could be the position that we get to in a few years.I think I would be trying to find out what others do as you can't be the first one in this situation. I would try the school liaison officer, SEN dept at college and LEA.Our LA are keen on promoting independence, so I don't think they would be wanting parents to have to be taking kids to college, but equally they are not all going to be able to use public transport on their own. There must be a middle ground.Having said that, 1 of the special schools here have some work experience schemes for the older kids. They do need to be able to get to the local hospital independently to participate. this is probably at least 2 bus rides for most of the children. Good luck.

I spoke to the careers advisor at the lea - she was really helpful. She admitted the situation was a mess and she said a lot of parents are angry about it. She said that the lea does give parents a contribution to the petrol costs (!) so it seems that they really do this.I can imagine that they do this because legally they have no obligation to fund transport if there is no statement.There are other areas where this no-man's-land exists between leaving school and becoming an adult - they can qualify for things when they turn 18 but until then it's children's services and the thresholds for getting support there are really, really high.

have to say that if my sons college place depended on me transporting him every day he simply wouldn't be going! I couldn't commit to that level of transport every day, I have a lot of other commitments with the fostering (and my own life!) and being tied down 2 hours a day with college transport would be too much.

I agree LOBS. Financially, for the LEA it must be cheaper to fund transport and college than a place at a special school.

Have you come across the "section 139A" report?I've bumped a thread for you on the school & education board as we were in a similar situation last year.Dd is moving to a new (entry level) course this year and something I picked up from the admissions tutor was that they were allowed to recruit students requiring transport onto certain courses but not others. The availability of transport is very variable across LEA's and I was interested to see Jellies post about the funding arrangements changing again. Let me know if you'd like to know our experiences of it all (it's a long saga....) but I'd definitely recommend prompting your school about the section 139A at an early stage.

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