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.