Our vision is to provide a multi activity offer that is open to any child or young person with an additional need that may prevent them from sometimes taking part in the mainstream offers locally.
This will enable children and young people with additional needs to overcome potential barriers to inclusion. Access to the opportunities will not require a formal diagnosis but will require membership for opportunities for those aged 0-18 through the All In Short Breaks offer.
Our mission is to reduce isolation for children and young people with additional needs and their families, increasing the self-esteem and confidence of children and young people,, developing social and friendship networks that will extend beyond the activity provided and improving providers understanding of how to support children and young people with additional needs.
As a consortium we aim to improve the lives of families with children and young people aged 0-25 (with diagnosed or suspected SEN and Disabilities) across Shropshire by supporting organisations to provide activities to offer ongoing physical and mental development, the chance to try something new, and to make friends. We want to support families to access activities that meet the needs of their child/young person, our priority will always be good quality services provided by qualified and capable staff and volunteers.
To find out more about each member of the consortium, please see our page dedicated to 'The Consortium'.
The Actio Consortium aims to deliver a joined-up programme of quality activity and support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their families, building a sense of community and achievement. Actio is responsible for commissioning, promoting, and monitoring Shropshire Councils 'All In Short Breaks' activities and will work with children and young people, and their families, to ensure the programme responds positively to feedback and comment. The Actio Consortium and Shropshire Council are co-funders in the All In Short Breaks activity programme.
Actio are committed to attracting funding to expand the offer of activities in the county as well as improve the quality of the offer for the providers by enhancing the support available to them. We will promote activities and services which meet our quality markers and seek to fund in part or full activities and offers upon application. Our key objectives are to provide a wide range of quality activities, promote resilience within the SEND community, and to improve opportunities for Shropshire families.
What we do:
SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) families have told us they feel isolated and disconnected from their communities due to the challenges faced in finding suitable opportunities for their child/young person. They state location and variety of activities along with a lack of awareness as being barriers to accessing current provision. Families feel most confident accessing opportunities where staff/volunteers understand their child’s needs and have the appropriate training and skills in place to support them well.
We commission providers to deliver high quality and accessible opportunities for children and young people with SEND and their families across Shropshire.
We work with providers to develop their offer with our provider support team. This includes training, resources, and dedicated support to identify and apply for match funding opportunities.
We do all of this to reduce isolation, increase opportunities for children and young people with SEND and their families, and promote living a healthy and positive life.
Our activities can be considered as 'Short Breaks' as they offer the child / young persons family the opportunity to have a break from their caring role where support for the child / young person allows this. However, we do not consider our offer to be respite services as this term is usually applied when specialist care is being delivered. As we are not funded to provide specialist provision, we cannot categorise our offer, activities, or the support available as respite care.
How we do it:
We attract funding for opportunities to be commissioned through our commissioning programme, grants to be issued to support opportunities to enhance and enrich their offer, and training & support to be delivered to improve the quality of opportunities across Shropshire. We facilitate, monitor, and support the provision of non assessed Short Breaks opportunities across Shropshire to ensure families have a positive experience of activities, developing a sense of community, and enabling children and young people with SEND to develop the key skills needed to participate in other non specialist activities in the future.
Between April 2021 & March 2024 we will be commissioning activities with funding secured from Shropshire Council and Arts Connect. We have committed to delivering a varied range of opportunities that includes commissioning 25% of the allocation within the Arts Sector to enhance the programme further. All commissioning opportunities will be promoted widely to attract a range of providers and encourage new activities and opportunities to be made available with Shropshire.