Short Breaks
Aiming High for Disabled Children (AHDC) is the government’s programme to transform services for disabled children and their families. It was launched in May 2007 and is jointly delivered by the Department of Children, Schools and families (DCSF) and the Department of Health (DH).
AHDC aims to deliver :
1. Improvements to specific priority services for disabled children via the commitment of substantial funding including additional funding from the Primary Care Trusts.
2. Improvements in the whole system of services through the setting of national expectations for service delivery, through performance management and user involvement
1. Funding for specific services under AHDC
The programme is backed by significant funding over three years 2008-2011, including (nationally across all local authorities) :
• £370m for transforming short breaks
• £19m for improving the transition process, which begins at 14 years, for moving young disabled people into their adult life
• £35m for accessible child-care pilot projects, to improve the availability of appropriate child-care for working parents of disabled children
• £5m for parent participation in all these programmes, aiming to help groups develop parent participation activities in each local authority area
2. Improving the whole system
To gain better insight into the performance of local authorities and primary care trusts around these services, there will be :
• a ‘core offer’, a national standard of expectation for the range of services offered and to whom
• a new disability performance indicator, measuring levels of parental satisfaction with their experience of services
Nottingham City Local Authority will begin this exciting work properly in April 2009. Currently a steering group is planning the work, with appointed project staff, and the Parents’/Carers’ Forum will feed into this, with representatives from the forum sitting on that group. The vision for the Forum is that it will inform the project steering group of the priority areas of interest for parents, shape the initial planning of the work and then continue to influence the development of new and improved services as the programme unfolds.
