Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what safeguards her Department has in place to ensure that all local authorities commission short breaks for disabled children; and if she will make a statement.

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.

The Department’s Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Advisory Team is offering support and challenge to local authorities to help make sure they meet all of their statutory requirements on SEND, and that quality continues to improve. There are also 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.

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 four years to support innovation and improvement to children’s social work practice. We are currently considering how we could potentially 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.