No job losses as Luton Council introduces 'short breaks service' for young disabled people

Redundancies will be avoided in a staffing reorganisation to create a new short breaks service benefiting young disabled people and their families in Luton and catering for rising demand, a meeting heard.

Luton Borough Council wants “to develop a centre of excellence for work with children and young people with disabilities”, according to a report to its administration and regulation committee.

The report said: “A short breaks service would unite the shared care team and a London Road resource centre team with responsibility for delivering targeted specialist and earlier intervention for families.”

“This would optimise the number of staff who can provide intensive family support services and help in undertaking carers’ assessments.

“Building service capacity can reduce the number of children and families needing those specialist and intensive interventions.”

Service manager for LBC’s disability service Kate Burchell explained: “We plan on combining our shared care short break service and London Road residential service to incorporate early support for families and reduce their need to require extensive social work provision as their child gets older.

“There are no anticipated redundancies at this stage. The current staff are experienced and committed. They will receive full training for any extra tasks we’re asking of them.”

Kate said that the council wants to build on the London Road team’s recent ‘good’ Ofsted rating to make sure they “continue to reach a wider pool of families”. The service manager continued: “And we want to work more closely with our community parent carer group, so we’re directly listening to the views of the parents of our disabled children.”

The London Road resource centre is the council’s short breaks overnight residential unit which offers care and support for Luton’s vulnerable and challenging young disabled children. Kate explained: “It offers overnight care for young people aged five to 18, although it generally tends to be from around nine or ten upwards.

“There’s also the short breaks shared care service, which is essentially a fostering offer for young children with complex difficulties and that takes place in the carer’s home.

“Some of these young people present with increasingly challenging behaviours as they get older and often require two carers,” she added.

“We’ve found a number of parents benefit from the overnight care provision. But they’re also really struggling with daycare, particularly during the holidays, or for that early evening support when they’ve other children to take to clubs and activities while needing support for the disabled child.

“We have a growing number of disabled young people in Luton. What the parent gets is a seamless service from the initial offer to the point of transitioning to adult social care.

“There are a number of families who don’t know where to go for that first supportive access and don’t know how to deal with their young child’s eating problems, sleeping issues or behaviours.

“We’re rejigging the jobs. We’re not anticipating anyone being made redundant. In fact, we’re going out for more staff.”

Councillors agreed on a recommendation to implement the new staffing structure.

SOURCE: Luton Borough Council administration and regulation committee (Sept 4th) meeting.