Consultation on eligibility for children’s disability services

Overview

This consultation into how the local authority will meet the support needs of disabled children and young people in Warwickshire opened on 4 June.

The consultation puts forward the concept of a Local Offer for Social Care and Short Breaks which defines how individual needs are measured and how care and support can be accessed.

The consultation seeks views on eligibility criteria and delivery of the redesigned social care and short breaks elements of Warwickshire County Council’s Integrated Disability Service.

The new Local Offer will enable the council to carry out consistent assessments to ensure each eligible family will receive appropriate support at the right time, and is able to exercise choice and control over the services they receive.

The consultation will run for four weeks from 4 June until midday on 2 July 2014. During this time people will have the opportunity to find out more about the council’s proposals, and share their views.

As part of the consultation, service managers will be meeting with young people from the youth council and the children’s disability forum to make sure their views are included.  A series of public consultation meetings will also take place at each of the county’s special schools and in Warwickshire venues. 

School meetings – all meetings take place from 10am-11.30am

Warwickshire meetings – all meetings take place from 7pm-9pm

4th July 2014 UPDATE

Notes from these meetings are now available below.

All consultation proposals are evidence based, make use of existing processes such as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) and align with Warwickshire Safeguarding Children’s Board’s ‘Thresholds of Need’.

Background

Integrated Disability Service redesign proposals have been put forward to make essential savings from the service budget and to meet recommendations of the Children and Families Act 2014 which promote increased use of personalised support.

A significant proportion of the savings will be internal with no impact on frontline services, but they can also be realised through modernisation and redesign of short breaks and social care elements of the service. IDS Teaching and Learning, which supports children in education settings and services delivered with health, has not been part of this process.

Consultation proposals focus on an equitable offer of support which targets those in greatest need and provides much more choice and control to families about how they access services.

What happens next

This consultation has now closed.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to give us their views.