Purpose

Background to issue

Surrey County Council (SCC) has statutory duties
that require it to provide a range of short breaks services for
children with disabilities. As part of this, the Council
commissions different play and leisure services from external
providers that are tailored to meet the varied needs of these
children in the county.
In
2024/25, SCC received £950k of additional short-term funding,
secured through a successful funding application to the Department
for Education’s (DfE) Short Breaks Innovation Fund, following
on from £907k secured in 2023/24. This funding enabled new
short breaks services to be piloted, in addition to those funded
from the core SCC budget, as well a short breaks co-production
project, to work with parents and carers to improve the current
offer and additional SCC commissioning staff to enable the
co-production work and cover off the additional reporting,
evaluation and contract management required for DfE-funded
activity.
The
additional delivery pilots have included:

Play and
leisure for children with complex needs who require 1:1 staff
support

£430,000

Whole-family short breaks

£168,000

Wrap-around support for families delivered by play and leisure
providers

£36,000

Pump-priming of an additional short notice overnight respite
service within an SCC children’s home

£180,000

 

Issue to resolve
The DfE
has formally confirmed that the short-term, additional funding
provided in 2024/25 will not be available from April 2025. As a
result, SCC must ensure its short breaks offer is affordable within
the agreed core budget for 2025/26.
To
achieve this, the following changes are proposed to the short
breaks offer in 2025/26 to:

-      
The Children’s Resources Service is reviewing
options to enable the move of the additional short-notice overnight
respite provision into business as usual, following the 2024/25
pilot phase.

-      
Not extending the pilot of wrap-around support for
families accessing play and leisure provision, as this does not
directly support our statutory duties in relation to short breaks.
We will be asking providers to take forward the learning from this
where possible, as part of their ongoing work with families. This
offer had supported 79 parent carers between April and December
2024.

-      
Not extending the pilot family breaks offer, apart
from two small external contracts (£14k total) that are due
to end on 31 March 2026, reflecting the fact that this is does not
directly support our short breaks statutory duties. This offer
supported 55 families in 2023/24, with 2024/25 expected to be
similar. All these families are open to the Children with
Disabilities Service, with family breaks provided in addition to
the statutory support allocated via children’s Care
Plans.

-      
Not extending time-limited Innovation contracts that
SCC has awarded to four local providers, which end on 31 March
2025, and instead allocating this funding (£98k) to
SCC’s core play and leisure service contracts, including the
DfE-funded enhanced offer for children who require 1:1 support.
These services were commissioned to reach 225 children and 40
parents in 2024/25.

-      
Prioritising investment to SCC’s core play and
leisure services, particularly to sustain targeted schemes for
children with complex needs who require 1:1 support (£430k)
and complex health, visual impairment and autism (£213k).
This will result in 16% less funding for the open “All
Additional Needs and Disabilities” service (£1.17m
compared to £1.39m in 2024/25), and a 3.6% reduction in hours
of total play and leisure capacity from c.90,500 to c.87,200 hours,
when compared to the baseline level of provision in 2022/23 (before
SCC started receiving additional DfE funding). This is largely due
to a higher level of provision being available to children who
require 1:1 support to access their short breaks, which has a
higher cost per hour.

-      
Sustaining the £500k additional investment
inclusive mainstream play and leisure provision in 2025/26, in line
with the SCC Cabinet decision to increase the range of mainstream
options for children with disabilities in June 2024.
To arrive
at these recommendations, consideration has been given
to:

-      
how best respond to current patterns of needs and
demand, including increased numbers of children with complex needs
who require 1:1 support to access their short breaks, within
available resources;

-      
ensuring focus on services that align most closely
to SCC’s statutory short breaks duties as a local authority;
and

-      
ensuring the offer is affordable within the 2025/26
core budget, which is being sustained at the increased 2024/25
level.

Conclusion and recommendation for
decision
Whilst it is acknowledged that the above proposals will mean
changes to services for some children and families, they represent
the most appropriate way to mitigate the end of additional DfE
grant funding for Surrey, whilst ensuring:
-      
priority is given to core play and leisure provision
within the proposals that we know are valued by families,
particularly those schemes the support children with the most
complex needs and disabilities, whilst impact on other general play
and leisure schemes is minimised by reallocating funding from
discretionary areas of short breaks provision
-      
the services that most directly fulfil SCC’s
short breaks statutory duties are prioritised within the available
budget
-      
SCC remains within its agreed budget allocation for
short breaks services, in support of its overall legal duty to
deliver a balanced budget
-     
SCC continues to invest in its strategy to enable
more children and young people with additional needs and
disabilities to access inclusive, mainstream play and leisure
opportunities across the county

Content

It
was AGREED that:
 
The
proposed changes to delivery of short breaks services, as set out
above, are implemented for 2025/26, following the ending of
additional grant funding from the DfE that has enabled an enhanced
short breaks service since 2023/24.