Tag Archives: autism

Terrified autistic teenager with the mental age of five left locked on school bus for 45 minutes by driver

May 10, 2012   autism, Carers
  • Ellie Wales, 16, was returning home from school when she was left on a bus in Dormanstown, East Cleveland
  • Her escort, who was also on the bus, has resigned
  • The driver has been suspended and will face a disciplinary hearing

By Graham Smith

PUBLISHED: 16:06, 9 May 2012 | UPDATED: 02:07, 10 May 2012

An autistic teenager with the mental age of five-year-old was left locked in a school bus alone for 45 minutes after a driver failed to notice that she was there.

Ellie Wales, 16, was returning home from school when she was left on board the vehicle at a bus depot in Dormanstown, East Cleveland.

Her father Frankie Wales said he was ‘distraught and frantic with worry’ when he heard about the ordeal she was put through.

Glad to be home: Ellie Wales with her parents Frankie and Maggie. The teenager, who has a mental age of five, was locked on a school bus for 45 minutes after the driver failed to notice her when he parked in Dormanstown, East Cleveland

It was only when Mr Wales rang the bus company to report that Ellie had not returned home that the driver realised he had left the teenager on the bus.

Ellie, who has the mental age of a five-year-old due to her autism and learning difficulties, came home in tears after the incident and told her parents that she thought she had done something wrong.

The bus driver, who works for Redcar and Cleveland Council, has been suspended and will face a disciplinary hearing.

The teenager’s escort, who was also on the bus, has resigned.

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How the ‘perfect storm of cuts’ is shrinking one woman’s life choices

May 10, 2012   autism, Carers, dementia, ukcuts

Rose Fernandes’s council wants to reduce care for her autistic daughter and her mother with dementia, and a cap on housing benefit could force the family to live apart

 

Rose Fernandes with her daughter Crystal, who is autistic and faces having her time with a carer cut from nine hours a day to four hours a week. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

As politicians shrink the state, Rose Fernandes’s life choices dwindle. Her day is sandwiched between caring for her autistic 25-year-old daughter Crystal and her 83-year-old mother, Maria, who suffers from dementia. But since 2010, she has been caught in a whirlwind of cuts, reducing her life to a series of arguments – in and out of lawyers’ offices – to preserve her way of life.

It began two years ago when her local council in Brent, north-west London, said it wanted to reduce the number of hours it would pay a carer to look after her daughter from nine hours a day to just four hours a week. But Fernandes says the day-to-day care for Crystal is constant – she needs to be washed, dressed, fed, taken to the toilet and watched all the time because she is not aware of everyday dangers.

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Royal Wedding grants for carers

April 26, 2012   autism, Carers, mental health

GROUPS supporting carers will receive grants from the Royal Wedding Fund.

Published 26 Apr 2012 12:30

 

Bracknell Forest Voluntary Action (BFVA) will receive £4,000 and Wokingham, Bracknell and District Mencap will receive £2,000.

The money has been distributed by Berkshire Community Foundation, a grant-making charity, which was one of 26 organisations chosen by Prince William and Catherine Middleton to benefit from a charitable gift fund set up to mark their wedding in April last year. Staff and trustees met on Friday to choose 13 voluntary groups.

Chris Bounds, care services manager at BFVA, said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded money from the Royal Wedding Fund! Our £4,000 grant will supplement the services that we provide to unpaid, informal adult carers in Bracknell Forest borough. We will be setting up regular events to allow carers to socialise and benefit from the peer support that they get from each other.”

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