Children & Young People's Services
1 Hillman Street
London E8 1DY
020 8356 6169
CAS-703418-NMLJ1M
Response letter to be sent by emailGlyn Gaskarth
/ 25 July 2014
Dear Mr Gaskarth
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 - INFORMATION REQUEST
Thank you for your email dated 11 November 2013 seeking information on respite care for families with disabled children aged 18 -25 that are in crisis. Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your request.
After receiving your request we sought clarification on your definition of the terms ‘respite’ and ‘family in crisis’. You replied:
‘Respite care includes funded short breaks, residential overnight stays and any direct funding or personal budgets provided to families so they can purchase respite services. I accept that personal budgets may be used to also purchase non respite services but please provide the figure and a list of the type of permissible expenditures if it is not possible to identify the specific amount of the personal budget spent on respite care.
‘A family in crisis is a family which is no longer able to continue meeting its responsibilities to provide care and support to their disabled family member and is unable to cope. If you do not recognise such a category please specify what terminology you use to describe families which have specified they are unable to continue performing their care responsibilities or families which are recognised by social services as failing or at risk of failing in their care responsibilities and consequently requiring the local authority to provide emergency support or to significantly expand their ongoing support.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 directs local authorities to confirm whether requested information is held. I can confirm the Council does hold the information you have requested and that we can provide data on respite services for disabled young adults aged 18-25. However, some of the information you requested relating to disabled young people aged 16-17 is exempt under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.
The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 has set the appropriate limit as £450 based on a charge at £25 per hour.
Section 12 of the Act states the Council is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the costs of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
The appropriate limit is represented by the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days in determining whether the Council holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information requested. Consequently the Council is not obliged to respond to your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
To provide the data on the families of disabled young people aged 16-17, officers would have to manually analyse and extract data from the 0-17 cohort. Therefore, the data is not in an easily retrievable format nor is there a mechanism that would allow us to easily collate the required data.
The time taken to extract this data coupled with the time taken to report the data on disabled young adults aged 18-25 would exceed 2.5 working days.
Please find our response below:
Question 1: Please specify the number of families resident in the local authority with disabled children between the ages of 16 and 25 that received respite care funded by the local authority in each of the last three years broken down by year
Response:
To provide the data on the families of disabled young people aged 16-17, officers would have to manually analyse and extract data from the 0-17 cohort. Therefore, the data is not in an easily retrievable format nor is there a mechanism that would allow us to easily collate the required data.
Figures for families with disabled service users aged18-25:
2010/11 / 2011/12 / 2012/13Number of families / 27 / 23 / 16
Question 2: Please provide a figure for the total cost of respite care for families in the local authority with disabled children between the ages of 16 and 25 met by the local authority and the average cost per family receiving respite care paid for by the council for each of the last three years broken down by year.
Response:
To provide the data on the families of disabled young people aged 16-17, officers would have to manually analyse and extract data from the 0-17 cohort. Therefore, the data is not in an easily retrievable format nor is there a mechanism that would allow us to easily collate the required data.
Figures for families of disabled service users aged 18-25
2010/11 / 2011/12 / 2012/13Annual Spend / £73,496 / £59,073 / £28,142
Average Spend / £2,722 / £2,568 / £1,758
Question 3: Please provide details of any estimates made by the council about the potential growth in the use of respite care for families with disabled children between the ages of 16 and 25 funded by the council and any funds being allocated by the council in anticipation of a growth in the use of respite care for this group.
Response: All the health and wellbeing needs of Hackney residents are assessed through the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, which is produced by City & Hackney’s Health and Wellbeing Board. Please click here for more details: http://www.hackney.gov.uk/jsna.htm
Question 4: Please provide any data held by the council on the number of families with disabled children between the ages of 16 and 25 judged to be ‘in crisis’, the total cost of dealing with these families and the average cost to the local authority of a family 'in crisis' per year in each of the last three years.
Response: Hackney Council does not assess families as being ‘in crisis’, nor is such terminology used. We are therefore unable to answer this question.
Question 5: Please define what qualifies a family as ‘in crisis’ as determined by the local authority.
Response: As per the response to Question 4, there is no definition of ‘in crisis’. The needs of families are assessed case by case.
When a disabled young person with care and support needs turns 18 they are regarded as a adult. This means their social care needs are assessed as an adult using a needs assessment under the Fairer Access to Care framework to determine whether they meet the threshold foradult services.
Hackney Council'sthresholds forfor access to adult services (18 and over) are critical and substantial. Our Fairer Access to Careeligibility can be viewed here on the Hackney Council website http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/aop-eligibility-criteria.pdf
Carers can also have a carers assessment which maylead to services includingshort term and emergencyrespite and carers direct payments. Carers can request an assessment themselves and will be offered an assessment when the person they care for undergoes a needs assessment.
You can read more about our carers assessments and the range of carers services availablehere on the council website
http://www.hackney.gov.uk/carers-assessment.htm
Please note the information provided to you in this response is still covered by copyright legislation. You are not authorised to re-use this information for commercial or research purposes as defined by the Re-Use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005. If you do wish to re-use this information please contact:
The Information Governance Team
6-15 Florfield Road
Hackney
London
E8 1DT.
If you are dissatisfied with this response and wish to appeal, please write to the above address and your complaint will be dealt with through our Internal Review procedure.
If you are still not satisfied following the Internal Review, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner. He can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone:01625 545 700
www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk
Yours sincerely