New Briefing Papers on Short Breaks for Disabled Children

The Briefings contain recommendations for local action to improve short breaks, including:

• The introduction of more flexible and informal commissioning arrangements to encourage small local providers to enter the market;
• The importance of resourcing and working alongside family carer organisations;
• The need to target support to mainstream community resources to enable them to offer suitable and welcomed environments for disabled children and young people.

The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned the Centre for Disability Research at Lancaster University (CeDR) and the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) to evaluate the short breaks Pathfinder initiative. These briefings summarise the key learning points in order to help local commissioners and providers make use of the findings from the evaluation.