Tameside Short Break Statement for Children with Additional Needs

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Short Breaks Service Statement

Children And Young People With A Disability 2011/12

Section 1: Introduction

1.1 What are we doing and why?

Paragraph 6(1) of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989 requires local authorities to provide services designed to give breaks for carers of disabled children. Regulations relating to this duty, which came into force on the 1 April 2011, require each local authority to provide a Short Breaks Service Statement so that families know:

What services are available
How these services can be accessed
How the range of services are designed to meet the needs of families with disabled children in their area

1.2 How are we putting this statement together?

We have undertaken a lot of consultation in Tameside around the provision of short breaks to find out what families needs are and how we can meet them through offering a range of short breaks.

All of this information, plus continuous feedback from families and from the parent forum has been used to put this statement together.

As we deliver our short breaks programme, we have continuously gained feedback and worked in partnership with parents/carers to continue to enhance and in some cases transform services.

1.3 Who has prepared the statement?

This statement has been produced by Beverley Connolly - Head of ISCAN, Integrated Service for Children with Additional Needs. The statement has been agreed with our parent forum.

We have ensured that, through listening to families, children and young people with a disability and service providers, their voices are at the heart of this statement.

Section 2: Definitions

2.1 Definition of Disability (In accordance with the Equality Act 2010)

A person is disabled if:

They have a mental or physical impairment

The impairment has a substantial* and long term* adverse effect on their ability to perform normal day to day* activities
- *Substantial means more that minor or trivial;
- *Long term means that the effect of the impairment has lasted or is likely to last for at least twelve months
- *Normal day to day activities include everyday things like eating, washing, walking and going shopping.

2.2 Definition of Short Breaks

Short breaks form part of a continuum of services, which support disabled children, young people and their families. Short breaks are provided to give:

Children and young people enjoyable experiences away form their primary carers, thereby contributing to their personal and social development and reducing social isolation
Parents, carers and families receive a necessary and valuable break from their caring responsibilities and to enable them to maintain and improve the quality of care they provide.

There are two main categories of short breaks Tameside provides which are:

2.3 Targeted short breaks

These short breaks are for those children with disabilities who are not able to access universal activities and are at risk of social exclusion. These breaks can be accessed by contacting the providers direct and are not subject to a formal assessment of need. They are community based short breaks and the majority are managed and lead by parent volunteers.

2.4 Targeted complex needs short breaks

These short breaks are accessed through a social care assessment and are for families where there is a high level of need and complex disability and who require specialist provision to enable them to access short breaks. Families will usually be in receipt DLA. These short breaks usually consist of a package of support that may include overnight short breaks, direct payment/individual budget, direct support in the family home and outreach support. A social worker or service co-ordinator will oversee the higher level packages and they will always be subject to an assessment of need and approval at the children with disabilities resource panel.

2.5 Range of Short Breaks

Short breaks can include day, evening, overnight and weekend activities and can take place in the child’s home, the home of an approved carer, a residential or community setting. They come in a range of formats and each one can last just a few hours to a few days, and occasionally longer depending on the type of provision and the needs of the child and their family.

Section 3: Tameside’s Short Breaks Programme

3.1 Tameside Council’s Vision for Short Breaks

Tameside have worked in partnership with parents/carers, children with disabilities, volunteers and professionals to transform our short break services for disabled children. By continuing to listen to the needs, aspirations and ideas of disabled children and families we aim to jointly provide a range of short breaks that are fun, promote independence, support learning and provide a break for primary carers from their caring responsibilities.
We will achieve this by continuing to provide a range of responsive, timely and accessible short breaks.

Tameside Priorities for disabled children and their families.

Improve access to services for disabled children and young people and their families?
Help disabled children and young people to access services in their local area
Services to be of a high quality with regard to safety, disability knowledge and staff training
Demonstrate commitment towards equality of opportunity for disabled children and young people.

3.2 What does our data tell us?

In Tameside it is estimated we have 58,989 children aged 0-18 (mid year 2009 population estimate). Based on the assumption that 1.2% of the child population is a child or young person with a disability, this means that around 708 children and young people need additional support to access universal services and will be at level 3 of the local children’s needs framework or need a specialist response and will be at level 4 or 5 of the local children’s needs framework. This is the target population for our short breaks provision.

The Integrated service for children with additional needs has gathered some useful data on short break provision. This has helped us to understand the needs of disabled children and their families in our area.

Section 4: Consultation

4.1 How has consultation feedback influenced the assessment of need?

Participation is about providing choices and opportunities for children and their parent/carers to have an input into decisions that affect their lives.
It is about talking, listening to and hearing children and their parents and carers, encouraging and supporting them to contribute, and acting on their views and ideas whilst being open, honest and realistic with them on the levels of involvement they can have.

4.2 Positive steps have already been made:

The development of the Children with disabilities parent forum which has recently been re-launched to encourage wider membership.
The use of family service plans which place the parents and child’s priorities at the centre of our interventions
Joint development on the strategy for services for CWD.
Disabled young people on the youth opportunity partnership and school council
Training for parents to become Key Workers
Inclusion of parents in the delivery of key worker training
Parents/carers played a key role in the design of our new community based short breaks
Parent groups now deliver a range of sustainable community based short breaks

4.3 Children and Young People

At the start of our short breaks transformation in 2008, we undertook a large consultation exercise with young people with disabilities aged between 8-16yrs to find out what short breaks they would like to access and the things that they like doing in their spare time. This informed our commissioning and developments.

We constantly gain feedback from children and young people and parent/carers. All of our providers gain valuable feedback from young people to check that services are still enjoyable and meeting needs; this information informs the annual commissioning cycle and future commissioning activity.

4.4 Parents and Carers

Tameside has a very active parent forum that is held every month. A hub and spoke system operates with all of our parent groups feeding into the forum. Managers and partners attend the forum to consult on a wide range of issues/developments.

4.5 Other Consultation

The short breaks steering group is made up of professionals, parents, voluntary, third sector representatives who continuously get feedback from the providers of short breaks. This helps providers make changes to the short breaks on an on-going basis to make sure they are meeting children, young people and family’s needs. Regular meetings also take place with providers to ensure services are appropriate and meeting expected standards.

4.6 What We Did

We did not just talk and listen to the responses, we worked in partnership with parents/carers and other voluntary groups to design and now deliver a range of short breaks to meet local need.
New developments included;-

More sport and recreational activities/short breaks
More school holiday play schemes/activities
Having more short breaks at the weekend and evenings
More work undertaken with universal service providers
Having more short breaks for children with complex health needs
Having a short breaks steering group to monitor effectiveness of provision
By introducing the common assessment framework, families are only having to tell their story once to be able to access a whole range of services
Families do not need a social worker to be able to access a community based short break.
All the information about the variety of short breaks is available in on line

Section 5. The Tameside Offer 2011/12

5.1 Our Community Based Short Breaks Provision 2011/12

Details of our extensive range of community based targeted short breaks can be found by following the links below.

The following short breaks are for those families with a child who has high level complex disabilities. These breaks can only be accessed following a social care assessment of need and approval at the children with disabilities/continuing health resource panel.

Direct Payment/ individual budget
Residential overnight short break
Home based outreach/domiciliary support
Family Link overnight short break
Supported nursery provision

5.2 Universal Service Provision and the Workforce

Universal services are those services which are accessible to all children and young people, In Tameside we have undertaken a lot of work with universal services to increase access for children and young people with a disability.

We provide a lot of training for both targeted and universal services around the needs of children and young people with a disability and will continue to do so. This includes awareness raising around specific conditions, moving and handling training, behaviour management training and training pertaining to specific medical intervention.

We aim to provide a seamless service for disabled children and young people, whether universal or specialist services.

5.3.5 Transitions

There has been a specific focus on transitions in the past 24 months within Tameside and we are undertaking a lot of work to ensure that services are working together to make transitions a smoother process as possible.

We are continuing to focus on this area of work and will be working in partnership with the parent forum to improve the process.

6. Reviewing the statement

The statement will be monitored on a quarterly basis. A review will be undertaken annually.

Page last updated: 27 January 2012