Aiming High activities

Number of sessions offered

For children and young people accessing the core Aiming High offer this is 2 sessions per month. Previously the core offer was 1 session per month with an extra 1 session during school holidays. To make this consistent every month, we have increased this to 2 sessions per month. An annual increase from 19 sessions to 24 sessions.

For those children and young people with complex needs, who require more than one short break a month, there is an enhanced offer. Support at this level is to be agreed at the Council’s Multi-Agency Short Breaks Forum. The enhanced offer is up to  a maximum of 4 sessions per month which equates to an annual offer of 48 sessions.

Transport

Those children and young people who have enhanced support and transport agreed, this will continue at the present time. We will review all of these individual transport arrangements over the next three months in order to ensure we are offering a fair and equitable service in line with other Local Authority’s offers.

New transport will only be agreed through the Multi-Agency Short Break Forum where a request for enhanced support is put forward. If the assessment completed by the social worker shows a need for transport, this will be discussed at the forum.

Booking process

Each month the booking system will list the activities available for the following month. From the 1st of the month we ask that you look at what is on offer for the month and complete a booking request for the activities of your choice. From the 11th onwards providers will then review their list of interested families and confirm whether you have a place on the chosen activity. Providers may want to discuss your child’s needs with you further to ensure that the activity is appropriate, before confirming a place.

We want to ensure that access to activities is fair and equitable and not offered on a first come first serve basis. Parents/carers have told us that they are not always available to book activities on the 1st of the month and may then miss out on an activity. This booking process allows parents/carers time to complete their booking requests and providers to then make fair decisions on who is offered a place.

Assessments

Each provider will contact the parent/carer to approve or decline a booking. Providers may:

• ask for further details
• complete an assessment of need particularly for children and young people with more complex needs
• to introduce themselves and to check if there are any other details the parent/carer wants to share.

We are looking at how care plans and assessments can be shared between providers with parental consent to minimise the need for parents to have to repeat information to different providers.

Staffordshire Residents

The Stoke-on-Trent Aiming High programme is available to Stoke-on-Trent residents only, unless there are mitigating circumstances. For example, a child who is living in another local authority area but is a Stoke-on-Trent Looked After Child. This is our reciprocal arrangement with Staffordshire County Council. They are in the process of updating their website to reflect this agreement.

We have contacted all of our Stoke providers to ask them if they are running SEND activities outside of our Aiming High that Staffordshire families can book and access. Once we have this information we will share it with you.

For example, Project Indi release a calendar of events every month that there are spaces for all children on regardless of their location. Families can contact Project Indi through the email or through their website to become a member and book on.