Decision details

The Adult Social Care Short Breaks Policy (formerly Respite Policy) sets out the county council's approach to providing and charging for Short Breaks from October 2023.

The Short Breaks Policy aligns to a strength-based social care practice model.

Strength-based social care practice is a way of working with people who have care and support needs as well as their families and carers, to work together to determine the outcomes a person wants to achieve and linking this to the person's own strengths and assets. Strengths and assets can be the person's own skills and abilities, their social network and includes community resources (what is available to them locally which can support them).

The practice model supports practitioners to have distinct conversations with a person and/or their families and carers and how they can access:

• Information, advice and guidance about accessing universal support.
• Short breaks for up to 6 weeks to regain skills and confidence, and to prevent, reduce and delay the need for long-term care and support.

·  Long-term support which is assessed against Care Act eligibility, for both the person with care and support needs and their carer.

The proposed Policy is aligned to delivering best practice and implementing national policy on charging for adult social care, based on a financial assessment.

In accordance with the county council's budget options for 2023/24, it is proposed to deliver the budgeted additional income from cared for people in receipt of short breaks through implementation of the following:

·  Removing the current cap on charges for residential short breaks so that people pay up to the actual cost of receiving the service, subject to a financial assessment under the Care Act 2014, which determines how much a cared for person can afford to pay; and

·  Where direct payments are used to purchase short breaks, the person will be charged what they can afford to pay up to the actual cost of the care, based on a financial assessment.

This is deemed to be a Key Decision and the requirements of Standing Order C19 have been complied with.

The Cabinet approved the recommendation(s) as set out in the report.