Short Breaks Consultation (July 2017)
Context
The Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Reforms are bringing both change and challenge to services for children and young people with SEND. Over the last three years, there has been a significant local and national increase in the number of children and young people with Statements of Special Educational Needs and Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC) Plans. In 2014/15 there were 1371 of children and young people with a statement or an EHC Plan. By 2016/17 this had risen to 1721.
We need to make sure the resources available to us are used in the best way possible to deliver positive outcomes for children and young people in Milton Keynes.
Milton Keynes Council applies three key underpinning principles to its medium to long-term financial planning:
· Smarter: Being more efficient. Reducing our costs, improving our customer services and more strategic commissioning to deliver better outcomes.
· Sustainable: Transforming our services to make them effective for the long term. Enabling communities, working with partners, and managing demand and growth.
· Different: Doing things differently. Being more commercial, generating income and reshaping what we do by taking advantage of new opportunities.
We have looked at the future of our short breaks provision for carers of children and young people with disabilities and/or additional needs in this context.
Local Authority Duty for Short Breaks
The duty to provide breaks for carers of disabled children is set out in The Children Act 1989 and the Breaks for Carers of Disabled Children Regulations 2011.
· 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.
· To provide a range of breaks, as appropriate, during the day, night, at weekends and during the school holidays this must include:
- day-time care in the homes of disabled children or elsewhere
- overnight care in the homes of disabled children or elsewhere
- educational or leisure activities for disabled children outside their homes
- services available to assist carers in the evenings, at weekends and during the school holidays.
· To provide carers with a short breaks services statement detailing the range of available breaks and any eligibility criteria attached to them.
Current Provision
Carers of disabled children and young people in Milton Keynes are currently offered the following:
· Assessed Services provided through the Children with Disabilities Social Work Team for children and young people with complex additional needs, including day and overnight care in the family home or in a residential home. This could also include one-to-one support to enable a child or young person to access a short break in a community setting, either on their own or with their family. Currently the Children with Disability team has 298 open cases all of which will have received an assessment. Of these:
- 86 have a care package organised by the Children with Disabilities Team
- 28 families access Furze House for respite
- 98 families receive direct payments and organise their own packages.
· The Short Breaks Voucher Scheme providing eligible carers with vouchers that can be used towards the cost of activities offered by over forty organisations that take part in the scheme. In 2015/16 just under half of the 1720 eligible families applied for and received short breaks.
· Grants paid by the council to Special Schools providing additional funding for Short Breaks activities after school and during school holidays. At the moment, Redway, Walnuts, White Spire and Slated Row all offer some provision. Schools also charge families for some of this either directly and/or by accepting Short Break Vouchers. The provision across the four schools is generally only accessed by children and young people who attend these schools.
Redway, Walnuts and Slated Row have provided Easter and Summer holiday short breaks (play schemes). Across these schools on average, each provided 35 day places over a period of three weeks; this has provided a total of 1,500 day spaces.
White Spire School have offered an extended day during term time through offering a breakfast and after school club; this has enabled 1,000 breakfast club spaces for children and young people and a total of 1670 hours of after school provision.
· Short breaks provided through MK Council contracts for children and young people with disabilities and additional needs:
- Barnardo’s Services: Play schemes/holiday schemes, clubs and activities that include provision to meet the needs of children and young people with more complex needs. In 2015/16 Barnardo’s provided 1671 hours of this.
- Walnuts Care Ltd: An offer of overnight breaks, developed through Walnuts Care Ltd. A total of 72 nights are provided through Walnuts Residential Unit a year. There is no social care assessment required to access this and it is largely only used by families whose children attend Walnuts. (Walnuts Care Ltd ceased to be in a position to provide this service at the end of March 2017).
Proposals
The proposals focus on the unassessed provision, i.e. the ‘universal’ and ‘targeted’ short breaks offer. Our ambition is to ensure that the offer is clear, coordinated and is relevant to children and young people across age ranges and needs.
1. Universal Offer:
We propose to decommission the Short Breaks Voucher Scheme.
The voucher scheme is well regarded by many families. However, it does not focus resources on the core aims of the short breaks duty and provide respite for carers/siblings and enable new experiences and social experiences/friendships for children and young people with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities). Analysis of short breaks voucher usage indicates that the most frequent use is to fund admission to leisure and recreational activities, such as the cinema. The vouchers are anonymous once passed over to families, and we therefore cannot evaluate whether they are providing financial support to families who would otherwise be unable to afford the activity. The scheme requires a very significant level of administration, with potential for efficiency savings.
We propose instead to commission new work to improve disabled children and young people’s access to a wide range of activities and services across Milton Keynes.
We are consulting directly with parents, carers, children and young people and with Carers MK, through this short breaks consultation, about our proposal to replace the voucher scheme with a post, hosted by Carers MK, that would:
- Support PACA further to develop the ‘PACA’ mark (awarded by PACA to local services that are fully accessible to children and young people with SEND). This aims to ensure that local providers are informed, supported and encouraged to take positive steps to enable all families to access their services.
- Provide support/signposting for parents who are struggling to find appropriate activities for their child with SEND, and use this experience further to develop the information about local activities which is available to all children, young people and parents via our SEND Local Offer website[1].
- Develop the Carers’ MK discount card, which all families with a child with SEND would have the option of signing up for via Carers’ MK, to reduce the cost of a wide range of activities and other purchases.
2. Targeted Offer:
Commission a range of provision through special schools and a commissioned service through an agreed provider(s).
Families accessing this targeted offer would have to pay, as they would if they were accessing similar mainstream afterschool, Saturday or play scheme activities. The specification would require the provider to offer the service at a ‘reasonable’ charge to the family, equivalent to the cost of similar mainstream provision; the cost of additional staffing to enable disabled young people to access the provision would be subsidised through a Service Level Agreement or contract. As well as specialist SEND provision, this could include schemes which provide the additional support necessary to enable young people with SEND to access mainstream provision.
Whilst families are likely to be in receipt of Disability Living Allowance and possibly Carers Allowance, which arguably should be used to finance the ‘reasonable’ charges, a system could be established to identify and offer extra support to families in challenging financial circumstances. Under the relevant legislation it is possible to make charges for targeted service. The current providers already do this and it is an approach that is common across other Local Authorities.
Recommissioning this service provides an opportunity to work with providers to ensure that the provision is co-ordinated across the various providers and caters for different needs and age groups.
3. Specialist Services:
Specialist respite will continue to be provided as now on the basis of a social care assessment.
Contribute your views:
The consultation will run until Wednesday 16 August 2017, you can contribute your views by email to:
Or if you would like to speak to someone you can phone:
Lisa Munro (Inclusion and Intervention Manager): 01908 657842.
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[1] SEND Local Offer