Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that local authorities provide sufficient short breaks to children with life-shortening conditions in England.

Since 2011, local authorities have been under a duty to provide a range of short breaks services and to publish a local Short Breaks Duty Statement showing what services are available, how they are responding to the needs of local parent carers, and how short breaks can be accessed, including any eligibility criteria. Local authorities are responsible for funding this short breaks provision.

Between April 2011 and March 2015, the government made available £800 million to local authorities for short break provision, along with an additional £80 million of capital funding for equipment and infrastructure.

Between April 2015 and March 2016, we awarded £250,555 to the Short Breaks Partnership (a consortium made up of Contact a Family, the Council for Disabled Children, Action for Children, and KIDS) to provide information and advice to those involved in designing, commissioning, providing, and taking up short breaks for disabled children. The Department for Education has allocated £200m funding over the next 4 years to support innovation and improvement to children’s social work practice. We are currently considering how we can use some of this funding to support local innovative approaches to short breaks for disabled children and their families and for making services more accessible.

The Department’s Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Advisory Team is continuing to offer support and challenge to local authorities to help make sure they meet all of their statutory requirements and that quality continues to improve. From this summer, there will be opportunities through the new Ofsted/Care Quality Commission SEND inspections framework for local areas to consider how well they are providing for the education, health and care needs of those with SEND, including their need for short breaks services. In addition, Together for Short lives, the UK charity for children and young people with life limiting conditions, received £551,029 from the Department for Education over a 3 year period – between April 2013 and March 2016, to help ensure children and young people with life limiting conditions benefited from the SEND reforms.