Short Breaks Fund

In July 2010, the Scottish Government announced funding of £5 million over five years to support short breaks and respite care. The funding is to be channeled through the voluntary sector to help support and sustain carers – including young carers - through enabling better access to short breaks or respite care.

Shared Care Scotland, working on behalf of Scotland's National Carer Organisations and the Scottish Government, was asked to establish and administer a Short Breaks Fund - a grant making programme to support the development of short break services and to support carers and their families to arrange their own breaks. Some of the funds will be used for administering the grants and running a Learning Exchange. We expect £4.5m to be allocated to grants and direct funding for short breaks for carers and people with support needs.

Guiding Principles of SBF

• providing tangible outcomes for carers, improving their quality of life and those they care for;
• supporting the personalisation agenda, providing early intervention, choice and tailoring service provision to meet the needs of individuals;
• supporting the key policy areas of reshaping care, strengthening self-directed support and developing person-centred solutions;
• complementing but not replacing statutory provision. 

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The Fund will be comprised of four elements:

The Service Development Fund: to support voluntary (third sector) organisations to develop new and existing short break provision in the line with the fund's overarching aims of promoting greater choice, flexibility and personalisation of services and support.

Click here for more information

The Time to Live Fund: to channel funding to carers, via local support organisations, to enable carers and people with support needs to arrange the break of their choosing. The first stage of Time to Live will involve selecting local delivery agents to administer the fund to carers in local authority areas. Time to Live will be piloted in 2011 but organisations can also apply for a grant through the Service Development Fund that they can use to help carers self-purchase breaks.

Click here for more information

The Better Breaks Fund: to provide grants to third sector organisations working in Scotland to develop additional, responsive and creative short break opportunities for disabled children, young people and their families.

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The Short Breaks Learning XChange: to support the sharing of information, experience and learning across the funded projects, and to a wider audience. We want to spread the lessons learned so that good practice becomes common practice.

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The Short Breaks Fund aims to compliment but not replace local authority arranged provision. We are keen that applicants from the voluntary and Third Sector work in partnership with local authorities to utilise all the available resources to achieve the best outcomes for carers and people with support needs.

In particular, we hope the learning gained will be of value to those responsible for planning and commissioning services, assisting their efforts to find innovative and cost effective ways of delivering short breaks and respite care.

We are committed to learning from experience and we expect to develop our grants criteria and how we target funding as we go forward.

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Grant Advisory Panel

To assist the NCOs in ensuring the Short Breaks Fund is well managed, is delivering its outcomes and is operating openly and transparently, Shared Care Scotland has set up a Grant Advisory Panel.

Click here to see who's who in the Grants Advisory Panel

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The Short Breaks Fund is being set up and will be managed by the National Carers Organisations with secretariat through Shared Care Scotland.

The National Carer Organisations are:

• Carers Scotland
• Coalition of Carers in Scotland
• Crossroads Caring Scotland
• Princess Royal Trust for Carers
• Scottish Young Carers Services Alliance
• Shared Care Scotland 

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Scotland's Funders Forum

Shared Care Scotland has recently become a member of Scotland's Funders Forum.  The Forum is a gathering of funders in Scotland, including statutory bodies and independent grant making trusts, who are committed to best practice in funding the voluntary and community sector and to maximising the impact of funding for the benefit of Scotland. We come together to share information, to identify and address areas of common interest and to share best practice and learning. 

For further information about the Forum, click here.