Short breaks quality assurance

We are committed to offering the highest quality services. We believe that high quality short break services:

• are safe
• are popular with both children and their parents and carers
• offer good value for money
• enable disabled children to have new experiences and develop new skills.

If you have a concern about a short break service that you have used please contact us.

To ensure that we are offering high quality services, we have developed quality assurance frameworks. We have different framework for services that are provided by us and services that are provided by other organisations and funded by us. Services that we fund but are provided by other organisations are called ‘commissioned services’. As well as our own arrangements for ensuring the quality of our short break services, there are legal regulations that apply to some of our services. For example, all providers must be registered with Ofsted and all organisations that provide personal care to children and young people must also be registered with the Care Quality Commission. Both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission independently monitor and inspect the organisations that they regulate.

Commissioned services

We always involve disabled children and their parents and carers when we commission a new short break service. All the organisations that we commission to provide short break services have service specifications that form part of our contract with the organisation. They describe how the services will be delivered and set out our expectations of what the services will achieve. We only award contracts to organisations who have demonstrated that they are capable of delivering high quality services. We require them to employ staff who are trained and experienced in supporting children with additional needs and to have a track record of successfully delivering similar services.

To ensure that the organisations we commission are performing well, every three months we ask them for proof that they are meeting our expectations. For example, we ask them to tell us the number of families that they have delivered short breaks to and how many hours of short breaks each family has received. We always double check and independently verify this information. We ask all the services we commission about the feedback they have obtained from their service users and how they have used this information to develop their services. We double check this information by consulting directly with service users.

To ensure that the organisations we commission are providing quality services we check their governance and policy documents each year. These documents include:

• proof that staff are Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checked
• insurance certificates
• safeguarding policies
• their constitution
• financial procedures
• Annual General Meeting (AGM) / Board meeting minutes.

In addition to this we go out and visit the organisations that we commission at least twice a year and maintain a regular dialogue with them through out the year.

Provided services

All short break services provided by us comply with our policies and procedures. Each service keeps a hard copy of the relevant policies and procedures on site. Each service will make this document available to any parents and carers who ask to view it. 

Each short break service carries out daily briefings and de-briefings that include attendance, an evaluation of the session and plans for future sessions. 

Senior Managers also carry out regular monitoring visits where they meet with the Senior Worker, Youth Workers and service users. Regular monitoring visits ensure that senior managers maintain an depth understanding of the service and are able to identify development opportunities.

Our commitment to short breaks

We believe that short breaks are important and make a big difference to the lives to disabled children and their families. We believe that enabling parents and carers of disabled children to take a break from caring for their child is a key to early intervention, preventing families from facing future problems. In 2011–12 we are committed to spending over £1.8 million enabling parents and carers to take a break from caring from their disabled child.

Despite the current economic climate, the amount we have spent on short break services for disabled children has grown significantly over the last three years and we are committed to protecting the amount we currently spend on short break services in the future.

We want our short break services for families with disabled children to:

• be high quality
• represent good value
• to meet the needs of local families
• be popular with local families.

To make this a reality we are planning to recommission a range of short break services in 2011. We have and will continue to involve parents and carers through out this process and make sure that parents and carers play an active part in the decision making process.