What is Short Breaks?
Short break care for parent carers is essentially a
planned break from the intense and often round-the-clock responsibilities of looking after a child with disabilities or complex needs. It allows parent carers to take time for themselves, recharge, and attend to their own well-being.
Purpose of short break Care:
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Prevent Burnout: Caregiving is demanding, and short break care helps prevent physical and emotional exhaustion.
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Maintain Well-being: It allows parent carers to focus on their own health, relationships, and personal needs.
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Reduce Stress: Taking a break can significantly reduce stress levels and improve overall quality of life.
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Maintain Family Balance: short break care can help maintain a healthy balance within the family, allowing other family members to also have their needs met.
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Prevent Crisis: By providing regular breaks, short break care can help prevent crises that may arise from caregiver burnout.
Types of short break Care:
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In-Home short break: A caregiver comes to the family's home to provide care for the child.
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Out-of-Home short break: The child stays in a short break care facility, with a host family, or attends a day program.
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Planned short break: Regularly scheduled breaks to provide consistent support.
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Overnight short break: Care provided overnight, allowing parent carers to get a full night's sleep.
Accessing short break Care:
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Local Authorities: Social services departments within local councils are often responsible for assessing and providing short break care.
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Charities and Non-Profit Organisations: Many charities and organisations offer short break care services for families with children with disabilities.
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Private short break Care Providers: There are private agencies that provide short break care services.
Who is entitled to Direct Payments?
A parent carer of a child with SEN and disabilities A young person with SEN and disabilities aged 16 to 17 years old (up to age 25 where an EHC Plan is in place) A young carer aged 16 – 17 A person nominated in writing by the child’s parent or the young person to receive Direct Payments on their behalf.
What is a Personal Budget?
A Personal Budget may help you to find alternative solutions that you may feel supports your child/young person better. This can be by purchasing existing services or by developing new and imaginative ways of using the money. Instead of a family being provided with a service, a budget is identified and work takes place to plan how this can best be used to meet the child or family’s needs. A parent/carer of a child, young person or adult up to 25 years old with an EHC plan can request a personal budget.
There are 4 ways that a personal budget can be delivered:
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Managed Budget – where the local authority, school or college holds your Personal Budget and buys the support identified in the assessment;
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Direct Payment – Money is paid directly to the young person/family and they pay for their agreed support where this funding has been identified in the plan
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Third party arrangement – A third party organisation, trust or nominated person holds the money and pays for agreed services on behalf of the young person
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A combination of the above
Personal budgets are optional and parents and carers or the child or young person can continue to have services provided in the current way.
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You can find even more about looking after yourself, talking to family and friends, and organising all of you and your children's appointments, letters and more in our 200 page FREE Navigating SEND Guide!
