Enquiries to: Margaret Petherbridge

Direct Dial: 01324 508796

Date: 22 December 2009

Kate Higgins

FSDC

Dear Ms Higgins

Request under Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - Short Breaks/Respite Care Provision

I refer to your email received on 27 November, to which I was asked to respond.

I will deal with each of your enquiries in turn:-

Please note that the overall council budget for 2010/11 has yet to be agreed by committee and so figures cannot be given for that year as yet.

1) The resources for increased respite provision are non-hypothecated and are included within the

overall concordat settlement. There is therefore no separately identified item of funding in the settlement for this initiative. In order to meet the agreed increased target respite weeks for Falkirk Council, £37k has been allocated to respite care services on top of previous budget resources in 2008/9 with a further £77k in 2009/10. These are the additional resources identified in order to meet the additional respite agreed

2) The amount that Falkirk Council budgeted, (not including the additional monies), was:-

2007/08 £1.244m

2008/09 £1.355m

2009/10 £1.466m

The actual or forecast spend for the relevant years was, or is expected to be:-

2007/08 £1.414m

2008/09 £1.401m

2009/10 £1.547m

3) The additional funding was, and will be, allocated to our “Short Breaks” Cost centre, which is the single biggest provider of respite care for the council.

4) The number of hours and nights provided to children and young people are as follows:-

2007/08 21724 hours and 1067 nights

2008/09 22890 hours and 1770 nights

Please note that the information for 2009/10 will not be gathered until the end of the financial year.

5) Actual and forecast spend on disabled children and young people are as follows:-

2007/08 £585k

2008/09 £607k

2009/10 £601k

In response to your final paragraph, due to the complexity of the information requested and the number of managers involved within this area of work I would advise that the cost to the Council in locating, retrieving and reproducing this information would be well in excess of the £600 threshold. We have however been able to provide the majority of the information requested and trust this response is helpful.,

Please refer to the enclosed leaflet which explains your right to complain about the handling of your case and/or the decision made.

Yours sincerely

Margaret Petherbridge

Policy and Development Officer

Short Breaks Bureau

Falkirk Council

The Data Protection Act 1998 obliges the Housing and Social Work Service to make information accessible

to the subject of the information unless there are good reasons for withholding it. In receiving information,

it will be assumed that it can be disclosed without further reference to source, unless the information contains

a clear indication to the contrary.

Social Work Services