Special needs child goes missing

Dubai police find boy with autism a few hours later after being alerted by institution.A 10-year-old special needs child went missing from a school bus on Monday afternoon, but was fortunately found unharmed a few hours later by Dubai Police and returned to his parents.The boy named G (name avoided to protect identity) is a Sri Lankan child with autism, and attends the Al Noor Training Centre for Children with Special Needs located in Al Barsha.The boy is believed to have run off from the school bus as another child was being dropped off at a stop in Rashidiya. The bus had a male driver and a female conductor, but no one was aware the boy went missing until the bus arrived at his bus-stop a few stops later, Esphana Al Khatib, director of Al Noor told Gulf News.The boy attends the Special Care Unit at Al Noor where children with severe disabilities and multiple problems are enrolled.Since it was only at the Rashidiya bus-stop that the conductor and driver had been distracted due to the dropping off of an older child and a fight between two children in the bus, school officials believe it may have been there that the boy ran off from the bus."When the bus driver and the conductor reached the child's stop around 2:30 pm, they realised the child was missing. They took the mother aboard and went searching in the area, hoping to find him in the vicinity."But when they lost all hope 45 minutes later they informed the school and we immediately called Dubai Police," Al Khatib said.The police found the child about an hour and a half later and took him to the Al Qusais Police station.The parents were called to the police station and the child was returned safely by about 4:45pm.Al Khatib said that the school is looking into the incident and that an internal investigation will be conducted to determine how exactly the mishap occurred.The incident triggered panic among the child's parents and the school staff, she said."The incident has moved us all. It is really shocking and has never happened before," Al Khatib said."Whatever I say is not an excuse for what happened. We accept there has been a safety breach."But what I can say as an explanation, not a defensive reasoning, is that we have one conductor taking care of the 36 or so children in the bus [with students] who have behavioural problems."The bus employees undergo special training but they are not skilled but only semi-skilled staff members."