Cuts in Respite Care for Disabled Children

Improving services for disabled children was one of the requirements of the Improvement Notice issued to Surrey County Council in 2008, after inspectors said Surrey services for vulnerable children and young people were 'inadequate'. Yet Ruth House, the residential facility for respite care attached to Freemantles School for autistic children, is reducing the number of beds offered from twenty to ten, whilst the opening of Applewood, the new children's home at Banstead built to provide respite care for disabled children with complex needs, has been deferred, even though it has recently been approved by Ofsted as ready for use.

The provision of this respite care was thought so important that complicated deals and re-locations of Children's Homes and Services began as long ago as 2001. To enable Ruth House to be built, the Karibu children's home was moved to Wells House in Epsom - and the respite service previously provided at Wells House was supposed to be re-provided at Applewood in Banstead. However there has been a long history of delays and rising costs, caused by unexpected problems and administrative failures.

The first six beds at Ruth House did not open until May 2008 and it has been fully open for less than two years. Answering a question from Liberal Democrat Councillor Diana Smith, the Surrey Cabinet member responsible said that "the beds at Ruth House have not consistently been fully occupied" so that "it is envisaged that there will be minimal, if any impact on current users".

"This isn't what I've heard", Diana Smith said. "One parent who contacted me described the news as 'devastating'. And how can a service that we were told in a report less than two years ago would save children having to be sent out of Surrey on expensive residential school placements, now cost too much to continue? Especially when the story at Applewood is that residential respite care may lose out to bringing more disabled children back into Surrey permanently."

Behind these changes is the demand for huge ongoing savings as the County Council anticipates big reductions in government support. In Children's Services alone, there are cuts of £1m or more this year in each of a number of different areas: grants and commissions from Voluntary agencies; social care placements; 'support packages' for children in need - and in respite services. Surrey's in-house provision for children with complex needs has proved a soft target.