As part of the re-commissioning of the Greenwich Short Breaks service for 2023, we would like to collect feedback from children, young people, parents, carers and other professionals on the current service and what is provided. Please complete the below survey - all information collected is anonymous.

If you would like any support with completing this survey, you can contact the Greenwich Parent Carer Participation Forum (GPCPF) by emailing admin@greenwichpcpf.org and they can provide assistance.

Some questions will not be relevant to everyone answering them. If you do not feel that a question is relevant to you, please do skip ahead to the next question. 

This survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. 

The term “short breaks” refers to services that help parents/carers to more effectively provide care for their disabled children by providing them with regular breaks. This is to provide opportunity for children and young people to access positive, meaningful activities and provide a break to parents/carers.

The Short Breaks offer in Greenwich means that all children and young people with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan can access up to 100 hours of Short Breaks activities per year. This is what we refer to as the “core offer”. The programmes in the offer are split into targeted and specialist:

Targeted support: This support is aimed at children and young people who require a bit more support to take part in activities. They benefit from higher staff ratios than mainstream activities, and staff who have additional knowledge and skills in supporting children and young people with SEND. This will include those with moderate level of need including ASD, moderate learning difficulties or communication needs. They are likely to be attending mainstream education provision. Any child or young person with an Education, Health and Care plan who lives in Greenwich is eligible to access the targeted services under the Short Breaks offer.

Specialist support: This support is aimed at children and young people who have more complex needs – this can be severe ASD, severe learning difficulties and/or complex medical needs. These programmes provide an even higher staffing ratio, typically 1:1 and staff have additional knowledge and skills in supporting children with complex needs. The child is usually in receipt of a care package from the Local Authority following a social care assessment of need. For those children and young people with a specialist level of need, the Short Breaks activities might be part of a wider care package of support.

For 2021-2023, Greenwich has commissioned 8 organisations across the borough to provide Short Breaks services and activities as part of the core offer.

A commissioned Short Breaks provider is an organisation that has been contracted to deliver a Short Breaks service within Greenwich. We try to ensure that these services cover a wide range of needs across the age groups who access Short Breaks. The activities may be offered on weekends, after school and during school holidays.

In this section we will be asking for feedback on how the Local Authority and providers communicate about Short Breaks and other services within Greenwich. As part of our communication, Greenwich has a Local Offer website. The Local Offer gives children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities, and their families, information about what support services are available in their local area.

Greenwich has a Short Breaks team who are responsible for providing general information and updates about Short Breaks in the borough, and also for coordinating and allocating activity hours to children and young people with their preferred Short Breaks providers. They are available to answer any general queries about services and to support with any aspects of the Short Breaks process.

The commissioned Short Breaks providers are responsible for liaising with families to organise individual assessments and schedule when a child or young person is attending their sessions. They are also responsible for keeping a record of the number of hours used by each child or young person who accesses their service.