Types of Break

Respite care can be provided through:

• Residential or nursing care – where the person you are looking after goes for a short stay in a residential or nursing home.
• Day-sitting service – allows you a break to go shopping, meet up with friends or have time for yourself.
• Night-sitting service – where someone will come into your home to allow you to have a proper night’s sleep.
• Day care – where the person you are looking after goes to a day centre or takes part in activities away from home allowing you a break from caring.
• Holidays – help and support for when you want to go on holiday by yourself or with the person you care for.
• Vouchers – some local authorities provide vouchers which can be exchanged for services, such as those offered by care agencies, or residential homes.
• Direct payments – cash payments from the local council. A person in ill health or with a disability can be paid a direct payment following a community care assessment so that they can arrange and pay for their own care and support services instead of receiving them directly from the local council. They can therefore receive a direct payment to pay for the alternative care they will need while their carer takes a break.

These breaks can be arranged by the local council carrying out an assessment of your own needs as a carer (a carers assessment) and of the person you look after (a community care assessment).

Carer’s assessment

If you are caring for an adult you have a legal right to a carer’s assessment. You need to ask the local council of the person you are looking after to undertake your carer’s assessment. They must consider:

• Whether you wish to work or take part in training.
• Your own health and wellbeing, and your right to have a reasonable amount of leisure time to yourself.
• If you need to take a break from caring for any of these reasons then respite care for the person you are looking after should be considered.

Community care assessment

The person you are looking after will then need to be assessed for the alternative care that they will need to allow you to take a break. Respite care is provided as a service to the person you are looking after. This is important because it means that once the person you are looking after has been assessed as needing the respite care, the local council is legally obliged to provide services to meet the need.

If you are caring for a child you should ask for an assessment for the whole family under the Children Act 1989. This assessment should look at your need for breaks and the respite care needs of the child you are looking after.

The social worker carrying out the assessment will consider the health and social care needs of the person that you are looking after, and what community care services are required to meet those needs.

Following a carer’s assessment your local council can agree to make direct payments to you. You could, for instance, ask them to consider making direct payments to you to help cover the costs of a holiday. This would be a separate payment from any direct payments made to the person you care for so that they can have respite care.

The local council of the person you are looking after may charge them for any respite care services provided. They may also charge you for any carers’ services they provide to you. If they do charge, they must follow guidelines about how income is taken into account – you should be told about this when the assessments are carried out.

How to get a break – Making the most of your break

This is our checklist to help you plan for your break:

• Make sure that anyone who is providing alternative care has all the information they need to care for the person you are looking after. This may be something as straightforward as what they like to eat, and when their mealtimes are, to more complex information about the medicines they need to take.
• It is important to leave a list of contacts. These should include the doctor’s number and the numbers of any other medical professionals involved in the care of the person you are looking after, those of nearby family members and friends, and your own number, in case of emergencies.
• If you have an emergency plan (which sets out what should be done in an emergency) then make sure you go through the details of this with the people who will be providing alternative care.
• If you are using a residential care or nursing home visit beforehand, so that you can reassure yourself that it will be able to properly care for the person you look after.
• If the person you care for needs specialist medical or nursing help while you’re away, you should arrange this through their GP. This specialist help can include visits from a district nurse or from a community psychiatric nurse. There is no charge for this health care, but each health authority decides what care it provides.