Tasmania’s education department and a bus company have appeared in court after a child with a disability tried to drink engine coolant in a bottle labelled as water.<\/p>\n
Court documents state the child, a student at a Hobart school, raised the bottle to their mouth and drank, or attempted to drink, the contents of the bottle.<\/p>\n
The Department for Education, Children and Young People and the bus company, RSB Travel, were separately charged with failing to comply with health and safety duty.<\/p>\n
RSB was also charged with offences related to hazardous chemicals labelling and access to safety data sheets.<\/p>\n
They appeared in the Hobart Magistrates’ Court on Friday morning and have not entered a plea.<\/p>\n
Court documents state the child was escorted onto the bus and sat in the front passenger seat.<\/p>\n
Once seated, the teacher left the bus, allegedly leaving the child without the supervision of a bus attendant, teacher, teacher assistant or any other person trained in caring for children with disability.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The education department has been accused of failing to ensure students were adequately supervised while on buses. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)<\/p>\n
The bus driver then also allegedly left the bus to assist with the wheelchair lift at the back of the vehicle, court documents stated.<\/p>\n
“In the unlocked glove compartment located immediately in front of, and within reach of, the front passenger seat was a repurposed 500ml plastic bottle labelled ‘Lightly Sparkling Australian Spring Water’ containing a hazardous chemical, namely HD coolant concentrate,” documents read.<\/p>\n
Court documents do not state the extent of any injuries suffered by the child.<\/p>\n
The department and RSB both had alternative charges that state the child either “suffered serious injury or illness” or “was exposed to the risk of death or serious injury or illness”.<\/p>\n
Department allegedly had no written supervision procedure<\/p>\n
Particulars of the charge against the education department allege it failed to ensure students were adequately supervised while on buses, and failed to implement a written procedure.<\/p>\n
The department is also alleged to have failed to provide adequate staff resources for supervision on buses, and information about roles and responsibilities, including for bus drivers.<\/p>\n
Court documents state that staff were given “some verbal instruction” about the levels of supervision required.<\/p>\n
“The [department] already had policies and procedures which governed the transportation of students with disabilities which could have been expanded to include policies and procedures governing the supervision of students with disabilities,” the documents read.<\/p>\n
“The [department] could have implemented a procedure where a bus attendant, teacher, teacher assistant or other suitable adult trained in the care of students with a disability was required to remain on the bus at all times to supervise students with disabilities on the bus.”<\/p>\n
The matter was adjourned to February 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tasmania’s education department and a bus company have appeared in court after a child with a disability tried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,177617,177616,7110,177613,177615,67410,177614],"class_list":["post-313835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-children-and-young-people","tag-department-for-education","tag-disability","tag-engine-coolant","tag-rsb-travel","tag-school-bus","tag-supervision-of-students-with-disabilities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}