Slough Borough Council: Aiming High for disabled children (AHDC)

Aiming High for disabled children (AHDC)

The national perspective

Aiming High for Disabled Children (AHDC) is a government initiative to improve the lives of children with disabilities. This is done by transforming services given in local areas.

The initiative is for all families with disabled children to have the support they need. To deliver this there are three priority areas:

Access and empowerment
Services will be more accessible. Children, young people and their families will be actively involved in the planning and delivery of services in their local area, through increased parental participation.
Responsive services and timely support
All professionals responsible for planning services for children, both locally and nationally, will focus on the services disabled children and young people need, moreso at key life stages such as the early years and in transition to adulthood.
Improving quality and capacity
Significant new funding has been allocated to enable local areas to develop their services to have what families want and need. There is a focus on the transformation of local short break services as families have described this as their key priority.

How we will implement this in Slough

In line with the key national priority we are changing our short breaks programme in Slough. The vision for our Short break Service for children and young people with learning difficulties and disabilities is:

‘to enable as many disabled children and young people as possible to remain living at home with support from community services to lead normal family lives and have access to universal settings or more specialist local services in accordance with their wishes.’

The major funding investment from the government which is part of the AHDC programme will give disabled children enjoyable and valuable experiences away from parents and carers. In turn parents and carers will have a well earned break from caring.

To meet the needs of families the short breaks will vary in length from just a few hours to a weekend or week. Disabled children and young people will be cared for in their own home or will have access to activities and places in the wider community.

For more details about the AHDC programme, please visit the Every Child Matters website.