Short Breaks Special (for parents) 4th July 2017 Dear All An extra newsletter, all about Short Breaks, from our Short Breaks leads in Kingston (Sam) and Richmond (Rachel)… and we would like to send our collective thanks to Rachel & Sam for their hard work in designing, managing and collating these consultations!
What is a Short Break? Before we begin, here is the legal definition of a Short Break for families of children & young people with special educational needs and/or disability. It’s a bit wordy and legalese, but here goes: “The Short Breaks Regulations provide further detail on how local authorities must perform their duty in the Children Act 1989 (“the 1989 Act”) to provide, as part of the range of services they provide for families, breaks from caring for carers of disabled children to support them to continue to care for their children at home and to allow them to do so more effectively. In summary, the Short Breaks Regulations require local authorities to do three things: 1. to ensure that, when making short break provision, they have regard to the needs of different types of carers, not just those who would be unable to continue to provide care without a break; 2. to provide a range of breaks, as appropriate, during the day, night, at weekends and during the school holidays; and 3. to provide parents with a short breaks services statement detailing the range of available breaks and any eligibility criteria attached to them” Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/short-breaks-for-carers-of-disabledchildren
The 2017 Short Breaks Survey Thank you to all the families who completed our Short Breaks survey and/or attended our Short Breaks meetings this year, and congratulations to the lucky winner of our prize draw who chose a £50 Amazon voucher! We have collected a huge amount of data which we have summarised and given to AFC. We will ensure that we use this data to feed into the commissioning of Short Breaks services for 2018-2021.
Our main findings: •
There are quite a few short breaks out there, but we don’t know about them! o There is a lack of information about Short Breaks o There is no well-known, or well-regarded and reliable single source of info
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Complicated administrative processes are a barrier to accessing short breaks for many families
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Lack of qualified support workers is a major concern for families
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Children with SEND and their families in our boroughs still experience significant social isolation