Short Breaks for Disabled Children

Previously known as 'respite' short breaks are essentially preventative, family support services that create an opportunity for the disabled child or young person to have a break from their parent and/or carer and vice versa and can be any time frame from an hour to a day, evening, overnight or weekend, depending on the needs of the family involved.  It can take place in a community activity setting, a child/young person's home or other residential setting and allows for the parent/carer to have a break from their caring responsibilities.

Traditionally short breaks have been made available in the form of residential provision and overnight stays with link families. Now the range of options has increased as service providers have introduced inclusive play and leisure options, community based short breaks (pdf, 28 KB), sessional and outreach work and sitting services.

Any child (who can be living with their birth family or fostered), and following an assessment by the Disabled Children’s Service, and is deemed to be 'in need' is eligible for a specialist short break. A child 'in need' also has an allocated social worker and is defined as:

'a child who is disabled or whose vulnerability is such that they are unlikely to reach or maintain a satisfactory level of health and development, or their health and development will be significantly impaired without the provision of services. (section 17 of the Children Act 1989)'

A child is permitted up to 75 nights short break provision in any rolling 12 months.

Short Breaks Services Statement and eligibility criteria

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:

We will publish our Short Breaks Services statement and revised eligibility criteria framework here later this year. It will set out how Bristol will;

• provide a range of short breaks services;
• give families the choice to access short breaks services using a direct payment;
• publish a statement of their short breaks services on their website;
• keep their short breaks statement under review;
• state in their short breaks service statement the range of short breaks services available, the criteria by which eligibility for services will be assessed, and how the range of services is designed to meet the needs of families with disabled children in their area;
• consult parents as part of the review of the statement;
• consider the legal implications of the eligibility criteria they apply to short breaks services; and
• not apply any eligibility criteria mechanistically without consideration of a particular family’s needs.

 And ensure that;

• short breaks are reliable and regular to best meet families’ needs;
• local authorities should try to reach groups of parents who may be more difficult to engage;
• parents are engaged in the design of local short breaks services;
• short breaks can build on and be offered by universal service providers;
• they are working in partnership with health services to understand the range of short breaks services in their area and to train the workforce;
• short breaks promote greater levels of confidence and competence for young people moving towards adult life;
• local authorities should ensure that those who use short breaks services have the chance to shape the development of those services; and
• they continue to develop their workforce in relation to short breaks services

Consultation and needs analysis 

Bristol City Council carried out recent consultation to find out the sort of community based short breaks that were preferred by families. You can see a summary by clicking the link right.