Short breaks consultation

We are reviewing our short break services for children and young people aged 0 to 18th birthday who are Swindon residents and have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010. A consultation was open for 6 weeks from 5 September 2023 until 17 October 2023.

The consultation is now closed. We will review the consultation responses and publish a feedback report in November 2023.

What is a short break?

Short breaks give children and young people with disabilities opportunities to have fun, share experiences and socialise away from their family, whilst giving their parents and carers a break from their caring responsibilities.

Put simply, a short break is time spent apart. Specifically, leisure time spent apart i.e. outside the school day. A short break can be any length of time. A short break can be provided during the day, evening, weekend, or overnight. A short break can be provided in the child or young person’s home, in a care setting, or in the community.

The purpose of this consultation

Every Local Authority is required to publish a Short Breaks Statement that sets out the range of short breaks available and explains who can access short breaks and how. This Short Breaks Statement must be reviewed on a regular basis. Our last short breaks review in 2021 identified that a further comprehensive review of our Short Breaks Statement was needed – a full review and potential re-design of every element of the what, who and how of short breaks in Swindon.

Our current short breaks offer is as follows:  

• Community groups and activities - available for all children and young people - have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that children and young people with disabilities receive the same services, as far as this is possible, as those without disabilities.  
• Inclusion Funding – available for children and young people with disabilities who require additional support to access community groups and activities alongside their non-disabled peers
• Specialist groups and activities - only available for children and young people with multiple, complex needs who cannot access community groups and activities with additional support provided through Inclusion Funding
• Assessed short breaks – further specialist short breaks (including overnight support) are available via a statutory assessment by a Social Worker
• Personal Budgets – available instead of, or as part of, a child or young person’s short breaks package. Many families in Swindon take a direct payment to employ a personal assistant to support their child to access social and leisure activities or to provide domiciliary care.

For further explanation of our current offer, please visit Short breaks page.

What we would like to do

We have worked with Swindon SEND Families Voice (our parent carer forum) and STEP (our disabled children and young people’s forum) to gain an initial picture of what is working well or otherwise. Together we have developed the following big ideas, which form a major part of our consultation:

• Develop a list of approved providers of inclusive social and leisure activities in Swindon. There are many ways to undertake quality assurance in order to create such a list, but one idea we would like to explore is whether our Young Inspectors (children and young people with disabilities) could test-drive and review social and leisure activities.  Support and access to training would be offered to providers, where needed, to improve inclusion across the sector.
• Consider a card scheme that provides access for disabled children and young people to these approved providers. This would provide more choice and flexibility for disabled young people seeking greater levels of control over their short breaks packages.
• Integrate Aiming High and our Disabled Children’s Team into one Disability Service. This would be a specialist service for children and young people with a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010. This service would provide a graduated response to each child or young person’s needs so that they receive the right level of short breaks provision without necessarily requiring statutory intervention by a Social Worker under Child in Need status. The implication of the above is that there would no longer be separate criteria for Aiming High and the Disabled Children Team.  A single criteria will be applied, using a decision support tool to identify how short breaks will be offered to families and at what level.  We anticipate that the criteria will be based upon those children and young people with an Education Health and Care Plan where the primary need is identified as a physical or learning disability.
• A greater variety of specialist activities is developed in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of children and young people open to the Disability Service, whilst also providing support for disabled children and young people who choose to access our community groups and activities delivered by approved providers. Some of the latter support might be short-term whilst they settle into a new setting and staff get to know about their needs. 

In line with Swindon’s Personal Budget Policy, families will still be able to choose to take a direct payment to the value of the identified short breaks need.

What this means for you

At the outset, we want to reassure you that any assessed short breaks packages delivered by the Disabled Children Team will not change as a result of this consultation, although they will still be subject to review in the usual way. For those of you with non-assessed short breaks received via Aiming High, this comprehensive review of our Short Breaks Statement means that there could be changes to your child or young person’s short breaks package. 

Whilst we recognise change can create uncertainty, these changes are designed to offer more choice for all disabled children and young people whilst ensuring that those who need more support will receive it at the right time; all within the funding available.

If you are concerned about how this could impact you, please email: shortbreakconsultation@swindon.gov.uk

Have your say

This consultation is now closed. We will review the consultation responses and publish a feedback report in November 2023.

Project timeline

The timeline below shows the lifecycle of this short breaks review, including the current stage and expected future stages and timings, should the proposals be approved and go ahead to completion.

• Consultation with parents and carers. The consultation will go live (below) on 5 September 2023 and remain open for 6 weeks until 17 October 2023. Alongside Swindon SEND Families Voice, we will also be hosting an online focus group for parents and carers as part of the consultation (dates to be confirmed).
• Consult with children and young people. We will organise focus groups for children and young people in their schools and short breaks provisions during September and October 2023
• Publish consultation feedback. We will review the responses to both consultations and will publish a feedback report in November 2023
• Implement changes. We will start to make changes to and adapt the delivery of short breaks service following the results of the consultationand publish a feedback report in November 2023.