• Our Services
  • Services for Families of Disabled Children
    • Direct Payments and Individualised Budgets
    • Short break care
• Our Approach
• Our Success
• Enquire Online

Short break care

Core Children’s Services specialises in providing short break care for disabled children and young people (formerly known as respite care). This provides valuable relief for families and an opportunity to provide attention to other members within the family unity.

Within our short break care provision, Core Children’s Services Disability Team offers the following services:

• Short break care overnight breaks, within a foster carer’s home or the disabled child or young person’s own home
• Short breaks during the day, with care available in the child’s own home and elsewhere
• Short breaks in universal settings, delivered through the support of a befriending, sitting or sessional service

Core Children’s Services is unique in the field of support for Disabled Children and their Families because of our access to dual registration with both OFSTED and the Care Quality Commission. This allows Core Children’s Services to provide a broad range of short breaks by providing:-

• Support in the Family Home
• Support in the community
• Support in Family Based Settings

It also allows the same person to have a child to stay at their own house and then go in and support the family in their home ensuring, for those children with the most complex disabilities, a short break with a consistent person.

Who’s involved in short break care?

The support workers at Core Children’s Services are trained and experienced childcare workers who specialise in working with disabilities. Our short break workers always recognise the child first and fun is a prerequisite of any short break we provide even those where we are providing practical support in the family home.

We provide a range of short break services

• Short break activity groups
• Short breaks on an individual basis in the community or family home
• Short Break Activity Groups either disability specific or activity based for a range of disabilities. Our Fishing Clubs have been a particular success with young people with Autism
• Short Break residential activity holidays/weekends

Our Disabled Children’s Support Workers are specifically trained, in partnership with the Local Authority, to work with children with complex needs. When providing short break activity breaks for disabled children the wishes of the disabled child will always be taken into account when planning any short break activity.

Disabled Children’s Carers (Family Based Short Breaks)

As part of The Core Assets Groups of Companies and through partnership with our sister company FCA we also provide short breaks in a carers own home either overnight or on a day care basis. The short break carers are trained foster carers and are therefore familiar with how to deal with complex needs and challenging situations. The overnight short break services of Core Children’s Services give parents a much deserved break whilst providing reassurance that their disabled child is being cared for by experienced professional carers

Why short break care and not respite?

The dictionary definition of respite is ‘the laying down of a burden’. Parents of disabled children do not view their children as burdens and neither do we, so the terminology has been changed. As an agency we are providing short breaks for families, time to recharge their batteries, do ordinary things but we would never encourage them to lay down their burden. For this reason we prefer to use the term ‘short break care’.

Funding for short breaks

The short break services of Core Children’s Services can be accessed in a number of ways. Many of our services are contracted by Local Authorities. Parents can contact us to see if we have a contracted service in their area. Our services can also be purchased on an individual basis by Local Authorities. Parents can access our services using Direct Payments, Individualised Budgets or through Self-Funding. Again contact us for more information. We are a national organisation with locally based staff and carers delivering short breaks right across the UK.

For more information about short break care for disabled children or to book either a group or individual activity break or overnight care please call 0800 6226114 or email contactus@corechildrensservices.co.uk.