Moon reprimanded over improper Assisted School Travel medical plans

Following a report on this blog in March that Assisted School Travel Unit manager Catherine Naismith ignored complaints about Carenne Support and Neil Moon over their handling of an incident where a student had a seizure and suffered from hypoxia while being transported home from school.

In that article, Julie Brown was critical of Neil Moon for failing to follow department policy by not making information available to drivers and Travel Support Officers. As a result of the article, the Bathurst Schools Office received a number of calls from concerned parents and launched its own investigation.

The investigation found that Neil Moon had negligently failed to provide bus staff with health care and behaviour management plans and that he had failed to have staff trained in their implementation. Neil Moon was told he was to arrange for information to be communicated to bus staff and to arrange training for bus personnel.

As a result of the blog posting and subsequent investigation, Neil Moon has arranged training for bus personnel for a total of five hours on two separate days. Despite the first of those sessions not being carried out properly, with confidential student information being discussed in front of all present staff were trained in high risk areas and provided with the behaviour and health care plans required under departmental guidelines.

The outcome is a testament to what can happen when issues are reported on this blog, complained about by parents and action taken.

Carenne principal not properly trained

The Carenne Saviours have expressed concern at Neil Moon not being trained in crisis intervention techniques, for which he is going to Sydney for next week. The Saviours claim that it is completely unacceptable that a principal of a special school not be trained properly, particularly when Mr Moon was the principal of Holman Place School in Cowra before arriving at Carenne.

One saviour told Carenne Gate -

"It's not like Lynn Duncan who didn't come from a position at another special school, you could understand it, this man was the principal of another special school and isn't properly trained."

"No wonder this guy thinks it's OK to sit on students, something Terry Neal started last year, he isn't even trained!" said another.

When the principal of a school isn't appropriately trained and is only sent for training in July of the year that he started it shows there are serious problems with the special education system, particularly when he was the principal of another special school for years beforehand. It shows the continuing incompetence of Carole McDiarmid and her Western NSW staff.