New short breaks services for Northamptonshire children with special needs to be discussed by cabinet

The council says the new model has been designed to better suit the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and/ or disabilities and reflects feedback received from families as part of the recent public consultation.

The short breaks contracts, which provide day, evening, overnight and weekend respite breaks for children with complex needs, is jointly funded by Northamptonshire County Council and both Nene and Corby Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), and delivered by Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust.

The current contracts are due to come to an end in July and so the new model would come into effect after a tender process.

County council cabinet member for public protection and education councillor André Gonzalez de Savage said: “We had a huge number of responses to our public consultation, which demonstrates how important short breaks are to families.

“As the current contracts come to an end later this year, we have taken the opportunity to ask families and providers what they would like from the service going forwards and have taken their feedback into account when designing the proposed new model for short breaks.

“I hope families will agree that the new services will address the issues they raised about consistency of services, the gaps in provision across the county and the need for consistently trained staff, while also enabling children with the most complex needs to access and enjoy activities in specialised and mainstream environments.”

The county council will continue to fund short breaks to the sum of £2.1m per year, with some additional funding from Nene and Corby Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Cabinet will meet to discuss the proposed new service model next Tuesday.