Weather disruption
Winter weather is causing disruption to services in some parts of the county. Find out what services may be affected in your area.
What to expect from our transport Passenger Assistants
Some SEND school transport routes may have a Passenger Assistant (PA) on board. Some students require additional support to ensure that they arrive at school safe, happy, and ready to learn. You will be told if your child requires a PA. PA's are not on board to support all passengers, only those which require additional support.
All PA's employed by Dorset Council are expected to meet the following standards:
- they have passed our DBS checks
- they are polite, supportive and behave in a professional manner
- they adapt their approach to best suit the needs of the student they are supporting
Different types of Passenger Assistant support
No PA required
When a child is considered as not requiring a PA it means that they can travel on their journey to school with only the supervision of one of our trained drivers and therefore do not require a PA to be on board.
Dedicated PA
A dedicated PA is someone who is on transport to support one child only and is not shared by other passengers. Due to their needs, some children require someone to focus entirely on them throughout the journey to ensure that they get to school safe and happy. This could be as a single traveller or on transport shared with others
Shared PA
A shared PA is someone who is on transport to support a number of children with different needs. Due to their needs, some children won't require close 1 to 1 supervision but need someone to support them on their journey
Training
All Dorset Travel PAs are required to undertake compulsory training in first aid, safeguarding, customer care and manual handling.
In some cases it may be decided that a PA needs to attend specialist training to assist them to best support a student. This will be decided by our Training Officers who will consult medical professionals where necessary.
If your PA is unwell
If your PA is unwell or unable to work due to personal reasons then we will try our best to provide another PA to support a student on their journeys to school. If we are unable to supply an alternative PA, it will be your responsibility to get your child to and from school. We appreciate your patience in these situations.
Meeting the passenger assistant before transport starts
It is not part of our service for passenger assistants to meet you in advance of starting on the route. However, this may be reviewed in exceptional cases where is it considered highly beneficial.
If you don’t think a passenger assistant is meeting our standards
We expect all of our PAs to meet our standards.
If you feel that a PA is not behaving appropriately, contact us with the route details and a written account of the incident you are referring to so that we can investigate accordingly.