To approve the creation of a short breaks capital grant scheme.

Short breaks provide opportunities for disabled children and young people to have enjoyable experiences away from their primary carers, thus contributing to their social inclusion and personal and social development. They also provide the parents and carers of disabled children with a necessary and valuable break from their caring responsibilities.

Feedback from families highlighted that children wanted to access more activities alongside other children, to increase socialisation, and that support currently provided, whilst meeting a number of key outcomes, may limit opportunity for increasing levels of independence for some children. 

The grant scheme will ensure maximum benefit for children with disabilities and special educational needs across Herefordshire, approved at the council’s budget meeting on 15 February 2019 as part of the council’s capital strategy. The aim of the scheme is to improve access to universal and targeted activities across Herefordshire for children with special educational needs and disabilities by delivering capital improvements, thus creating greater opportunity for spending time with friends, and developing independence.

The maximum capital funding available for this scheme is £118,000, which is non-recurrent. It is intended that all funding will be committed by the end of March 2020. If required, further bidding rounds will be scheduled during 2020 until the budget has been fully allocated.

The funding will be used for capital projects that support the provision of regular, inclusive universal and targeted activities to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in Herefordshire.

Wide publicity and awareness through existing networks will be undertaken to ensure that eligible organisations are given the opportunity to apply and demonstrate that their project will improve short breaks provision locally, achieve defined outcomes for children and young people, and will be sustainable beyond the grant intervention.  Applications received by the deadline will be assessed by an appraisal panel against the scheme criteria. Post implementation evaluation and reporting requirements will ensure that successful schemes are able to demonstrate that they maximise the benefit for children and young people with disabilities across Herefordshire.  Case studies and other monitoring information will be collated to ensure that the learning and impact from the grant scheme can be captured.