Activities and Short Breaks for Disabled Children

Herefordshire’s Children and Young People’s Plan 2015/2018 has been agreed by the CCG and Herefordshire Council as well as other partners. It contains the collective goal to enable all children and young people in Herefordshire to have the best start in life, grow up healthy, happy and safe within supportive family environments. Specifically for disabled children, the vision is that they will be healthy, safe and achieving well and will go on to lead happy and fulfilled lives with choice and control. Short breaks for disabled children are part of Herefordshire’s local offer for children, young people with special educational needs and disabilities and their families. The overall strategic direction continues to be to facilitate the increasing take-up of community based activities and services where appropriate to a child’s needs, thereby achieving efficiencies by reducing reliance on high-cost specialist services. Two of the partnership’s aims are to:
? enhance local support for families, including family based respite services by retaining budgets and reinvesting resources
? develop personal budgets and personal health budgets to enable families to exercise more choice and control over their lives within the budgets available

Under the Children Act 1989 and the Children and Young Person Act 2008, the Local Authority must offer short breaks as part of a preventative model and this tender seeks to access activities and short breaks to support his approach .