Activities Unlimited Review and Redesign

2023 Update on the Activities Unlimited Redesign

• We now have a new coproduced online application form which is accessed by Parent carers via a Suffolk County Council website.
• The application form has been designed to capture more information about the disabled child(ren) and the family.
• We now use a range of indicators to help understand the child(ren) and the parent carer needs.
• There is a new published criteria guide to help parents understand what level of offer their child might receive.
• There are 6 level of offers ranging from £200 to £1200 and we have a much higher rate of successful applications.

As you may recall, we began a review of our service in early 2020. Over the past months we have been busy testing our new self assessment form, and would like to thank all who responded to our request to add your data to it – you have helped us further develop and test this new system.  We are now moving to a new multi-band financial model for all new applications. This will capture a wider range of needs and enable us to support more families in the future.Due to the pandemic and to avoid any financial uncertainty for families, all renewals of existing Short Break Offer and Short Break Offer Plus personal budgets will go through our usual system for 22/23. Personal budgets will stay the same for 22/23 (subject to the usual spending and evidence guidelines). You can apply for a personal budget online here.

We are planning for the below changes to begin from April 2021 and will continue to involve and engage families, colleagues and providers with our work via the AU Newsletter, direct contact and virtual meetings.

1. AU SHORT BREAK AWARD / ASSESSMENT AND ALLOCATION

We will consider a tiered approach for the offer of personal budgets, so instead of having just two funded offers there will be a variety of awards ranging up to £1000 in tiers. This will enable funding offers to better match each family’s needs and be more accurate.

We will improve our current online assessment form to make it easier to use and understand, and more accurately capture needs with a requirement for families to update their information every year.

We will introduce a banding system which will give clear eligibility criteria for families and will include other support services they are accessing, such as DLA, type of Education, support from Social Care etc. This will be considered alongside the assessment form.

We will introduce flexible budgets. These could change each year, depending on the number of families eligible and the budget available.

2. HOLIDAY LODGES

We are now working with our Property Colleagues within Suffolk County Council to progress the sale of the lodges at East Bergholt and Dunwich.

We are also writing a business case to present to our Capital Programme Board, requesting permission to keep the money from the sale of the lodges to refurbish the remaining lodge and invest in our universal (non-grant funded) provision.

Our proposal is to hold a pot of money that universal providers can apply for to purchase equipment, small adaptations and training, in order to help them to become more inclusive and offer more activities to families with children and young people with SEND.

3. GRANT FUNDED SHORT BREAK PROVISION

We will use the feedback from the review to develop services and change the way we purchase some of the provision to longer term contracts, in order to give activity providers a more stable and sustainable position.

4. WEBSITE

We will move the AU website to become part of the Local Offer website (www.suffolklocaloffer.org.uk), so that all information for families with children and young people with SEND will be available in one place in line with Government guidance. AU will have their own section within the Local Offer website.

We will develop a new online portal for parents where they will be able to register and access their account, complete the online assessment and other required forms, update their information, upload their receipts and spending records. We will also be able to send notifications directly to parents to let them know when there is a new message or letter in the portal for them to read.

If you have questions about any aspect of the work we have undertaken so far, would like to get involved or receive updates on the review as it progresses, you can contact us at info@activities-unlimited.co.uk.

The team looked carefully at the results and what we could do to develop the service to meet the needs, want and wishes of our families.

We had to consider:-

• How we can continue to offer a short break service for increasing numbers of families within the budget available, keeping as close to the current model as possible.
• How we can change the way the website and online assessment works to give a better experience to both providers and families.
• How we can better manage our processes and systems within the service with our current staffing team whilst the work increases.
• How we can better capture a wider variety of needs and ensure a fair and accurate allocation of personal budgets.
• How we can improve the way we communicate with families and make the service simpler to use and understand.

We then wrote a report for our Directorate Management Team who make certain decisions about the services within the council. The report explained the review, what we found out and what we recommended as the next steps.

The Directorate Management Team agreed the following recommendations:

• That we now redesign the service.
• That we sell two of the AU Lodges, keeping Fritton, and ask the council if we can keep the money from the sales to reinvest in universal (non-grant funded) provision.
• That we move the website to better technological systems that we already have within the council, which will meet ours and our families’ needs.

WHY DID WE NEED TO REVIEW THIS AREA?

The AU website currently serves four purposes:

• It acts as the "front door" into the AU Service for both families and activity providers
• It provides a directory of short break activities, allowing providers to promote their activities online
• It hosts the self assessment form that families fill out in order to apply for AU membership and awards
• It holds the database from within which the financial awards are managed and allocated.

The current website was built in 2013, and over recent years has become increasingly out of date. Our capacity to update it is now limited due to advances in technology and compatibility issues, and so over the last 18 months, the AU team have already been working with Suffolk County Council's digital team and the Suffolk Parent Carer Network to review the website.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR?

We have already done a lot of work with Suffolk County Council’s digital team to review the website. We have talked to parent carers, to young people and to providers and professionals about what they want from the website. From these conversations we have collected a number of user requirements (what people told us they want) to help us make a decision about the best system to use and what it needs to look like.

We looked at:-

• All the processes we have in place to manage the AU Awards via the website
• How we communicate to parent carers and providers
• How parent carers join the service and complete the online self-assessment form
• How people search and find activities on the website
• How providers add their information to the website
• How we process and manage payments for AU Awards
• The reports that we need to run as a service

WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?

Parent/Carers told us that the website needs to:

• Have a focus on activities and membership
• Give clear explanations of the service and what parents, carers, children and young people can expect
• Consider other information and links to maximise sharing of information
• Keep it’s inspiring brand/character
• Be parent focused - doesn’t need games and content for children
• Be mobile friendly
• Work better when searching for activities nearby and on certain dates
• Have more information on activities to help parents decide if an activity is suitable
• Give more opportunities to encourage non funded providers to promote their activities on the site.
• Be able to search activities by date, level of need, location (including map), public transport access, facilities, age appropriateness, level of supervision and residential options.

The majority of other Local Authorities we contacted promoted their short break service and activities on their Local Offer websites rather than having a dedicated website specifically for short breaks.

WHY DID WE NEED TO REVIEW THIS AREA?

As well as short break awards paid directly to families, AU also work with activity providers to develop short break provision in Suffolk. We work with both smaller and larger partners in the following ways:

• Giving grants to providers to run and develop activities
• Awarding contracts to larger / longer-term providers
• Supporting providers with their marketing and promotion
• Business development support (such as help with external funding applications, advice on business growth and support with Quality Assurance processes).

As demand continues to grow, with associated increased costs, we want the provision we commission to continue to meet families' needs throughout Suffolk.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR?

In this area of our consultation, we asked families a series of questions:

1. What sort of short break have you accessed in the past? Please tick all that apply.

• Overnight stays
• Holiday clubs
• After school clubs
• Whole family activities

2. What sort of short break would you be likely to access in the future?

3. Are there any types of provision you would never want to access?

4. Do you feel there is a good balance of activities on offer?

5. Are there any types of SEND that you do not think are currently catered for?

6. Any other services you think AU should be providing, or any other comments?

We also consulted other Local Authorities to find out how they deliver and commission short break provision.

WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?

Families’ feedback confirmed that they continue to value our grant funded provision - many families have previously reported that these activities are the only ones they can access within their communities.

Weekend and school holiday clubs remained popular, being seen as a lifeline to give parent carers a break. Overnight breaks seemed less popular, as did after school clubs. This could be because many children and young people with SEND are transported to and from school.

All of the other Local Authorities we contacted commission a range of provision similar to Suffolk, i.e residential opportunities for families with complex needs and a range of other provisions such as holiday clubs and weekend clubs.

1. WHY DID WE NEED TO REVIEW THIS AREA?

• At the start of the review we had 4000 members registered with the service
• Of these, over 1900 were receiving a financial Award (Short Break / Short Break Plus)
• Others received a Membership Award, giving them access to our service and many subsidised activities
• The service continues to grow. In 2018/19, 1662 members received a financial Award, and by February 2020, this figure had grown to 1948.

Families currently apply for Awards via an online self-assessment tool. The system allocates points depending on answers to a range of questions about both the child and the parent carer's needs, and Awards are calculated based on this. There are currently three levels of Award, two of which come with a financial component (£500 or £1000 per year).

We needed to review and redesign this system because:

• Families had told us they found the current one difficult to complete
• We wanted to capture families' needs more accurately at the start, reducing the need for and frequency of appeals
• We recognised that we need to better capture data on sensory needs and social, emotional and mental health needs
• Analysis using other data available to us (e.g. education support levels, levels of certain benefits etc) showed that the level of Award currently being received was not always consistent with other indicators
• We wanted to explore whether the current Awards were flexible enough to capture levels of need.

2. WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR?

During the review we sent a series of consultations to families and professionals, and asked them to give us their feedback. In this area, we asked them:-

• Was the enrolment and self-assessment tool easy to understand and use? Should it cover anything else?
• Do you think the current levels of Award are right?
• Is there anything else about our assessment process that you find confusing, or you think could be improved?

We analysed our Award data up to September 2019 and compared it to last year's data, to monitor the continued increased demand and see how consistent Award levels were.

We also consulted with other Local Authorities (LAs) to find out how they assessed families' short break needs and allocated personal budgets.

3. WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?

208 responses were received in total across all 4 areas. In response to this specific area, families told us they were generally happy with the current service, but suggested some changes to the assessment and allocation process:

WHAT WORKS WELL?

• Families appreciated the support available over the phone and found the team helpful and friendly
• The option of a personal budget gave them the flexibility to meet the needs of the whole family
• Several associated positive effects for the whole family were noted, including better community inclusion and positive sibling relationships
• The option to receive awards onto a pre-paid card remains popular.

WHAT NEEDS TO IMPROVE?

• The online self-assessment does not accurately capture all needs, particularly sensory needs and those associated with social, emotional and mental health
• The offer generated at the end of the self-assessment process isn’t always accurate
• Clearer guidance is needed about the service and how it works
• We need to be clearer about what information we are asking for and what it is used for
• Give more value to logging and keeping account info updated for membership offers. (e.g activity preferences and notifications)
• Be clear about what we expect from people and what people can expect from us once they become members
• Give members the option to upload receipts and images directly to their account from their mobile phones, as and when they receive them.
• Some respondents felt the service needed to be promoted more widely to reach more families
• Some respondents felt the enrolment form should be updated annually.

WHAT ELSE DID WE FIND OUT?

• Other Local Authorities we contacted tended to only offer short breaks to children and young people with higher needs who were in receipt of services such as the Disabled Children's or Early Help Teams
• Some Authorities use those other teams' assessments to determine their offer rather than having a specific assessment tool for short breaks
• Some LAs used community workers to carry out assessments
• 50% of the LAs we consulted didn’t offer personal budgets to under 5’s (as other funding is available via government for this group)
• Most LAs we consulted had fewer families accessing short break services than Suffolk.