Short breaks support is failing family carers:reviewing progress 10 years on from Mencap’s first Breaking Point report
In 2003, Mencap released a report on the insufficient amount of support people who care for family members with severe or profound learning disabilities receive. We found that 8 out of 10 family carers had reached or gone beyond their emotional, psychological and physical limits due to a distinct lack of short breaks. We called this ‘breaking point’. The report called for every family who needs a short break to get one. It also highlighted the need for more money to be spent on short breaks services, and for this spending to be tracked to ensure it improved provision.
In 2006, we launched a follow-up report, which found that 7 out of 10 families were still being pushed to breaking point. Again, this second report called for every family to be entitled to a minimum level of short breaks and for central government to increase funding available for local authorities to provide these services.
Now, 10 years on, we are revisiting the support available for family carers to see whether recent policy initiatives and investment have delivered the much-needed change.
A total of 264 family carers responded to our survey on short breaks provision and experiences of caring. We also sent Freedom of Information requests to all 152 local authorities in England that provide social care services.
This report looks at short breaks provision in a climate of cuts to central and local government budgets. It examines the extent to which these cuts have impacted on the lives of people with a learning disability and their family carers. It also looks at the state of affairs for family carers of children and young people across the full spectrum of learning disability; from people with mild and moderate learning disabilities, to people with severe and profound disabilities.