Residential short breaks for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) currently provides the residential Short Breaks for Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) at three locations in Northamptonshire.
In March 2018, Northamptonshire County Council (NCC) put the residential short breaks service out to tender with a new model, which included a 32% reduction in funding.
NCC advise they will continue to fund short breaks to the sum of £2.1m per year, with some additional funding from Nene and Corby Clinical Commissioning Groups (this includes the residential short breaks service funded to £1.44m per year).
In respect of Residential Short Breaks for Children and Young People with SEND in Northamptonshire, the maximum combined annual budget of both Northamptonshire County Council and Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Groups set out in the Invitation to Tender is £1.44 million per annum.
Following this decision, NHFT have explored all our options to continue to deliver this service safely. NHFT’s priority is to ensure a quality service is provided to service users, their families and carers. Our focus on quality care has regretfully brought us to the decision of not bidding to continue to provide the residential short breaks service as we don’t believe we can provide the level of service we would want to within the finances now available.
We have not taken this decision lightly as the residential short breaks service is one we value highly. We remain open to discussions with NCC, who are one of our closest and most important partners. We acknowledge while we can’t provide the service to the level we would want within the financial envelope, this might not be the case for other organisations who might be submitting tender bids for this service.
We will be engaging with staff, stakeholders, service users, patients and carers to ensure they are clear on our reasons for this decision and to help offer support at this uncertain time.