Short Breaks Carers services feedback survey

Tell us about your experiences.

Consultation status Results published

Start date: 2024-12-11

End date: 2025-01-31

Results 2025-04-30

Category: Caring for Children and Families

Ward:

Activity closed. Results added.

Background

The Short Break Carers Scheme (Short Breaks) is available to families who have a child with a learning and/or physical disability living at home. The service provides support to these families, offering them a break from caring, while their child enjoys spending time with a short break carer.

Short Breaks are opportunities for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) to enjoy fun activities, where they can mix with other children, develop their social skills, and independently pursue their interests. This might include mainstream clubs and groups or specialist activities with children who have similar needs. All local authorities need to make sure they have a suitable range of short breaks in their area.

For more information on Short Breaks, please visit our Local Offer web page.

If you're over 18 years old or are looking for respite services for someone you care for that's over 18, please visit our Adult Social Care services webpage.

Why we want your views

We want to hear your thoughts on our existing services, any concerns you may have and whether you feel there are any gaps in the services we provide.

How to take part

Our survey closed at 5pm on Friday, 31 January 2025.

If you have any questions about the survey, please email our SEND Strategy Officer.

For general enquiries about our Local Offer, please visit our webpage.

What happens next

All feedback we receive will be analysed and used to make sure we provide clear information about short breaks, how these can be accessed and to ensure the provision meets the needs of the community.

What you told us

We're grateful for all your responses to our survey. There were some common themes in the responses that we've captured, and we explained what we're doing about them in our analysis document that you can find here.

What we did

We know that the current offer doesn’t work for everyone, and we are working to change that. We’re planning a new ‘open tender’ process to invite a wider range of providers to deliver Short Breaks. This will help us offer more choice, better value, and a wider range of activities – including holiday provision for children and young people with SEND. We’re looking at best practice from other local areas and using data about where eligible families live and
what type of Short Breaks are most in demand to shape what we ask for in our open tender. While this won’t be an immediate fix, we’ve asked our current providers to extend their contracts to keep services running while we work on
the new offer. Short Breaks are a key part of our SEND & Inclusion Strategy 2024- 2029. A dedicated task group meets six times per year to oversee this work and make sure we’re moving in the right direction.