Thrive-to-25: Southwark’s Short Breaks Innovation Programme
About Thrive-to-25
Between 1st April 2023 and 31st March 2025, Southwark Council and partners delivered a transformational programme of work called ‘Thrive-to-25’ to improve the short breaks offer and other forms of support for children and young people with SEND in Southwark. This 2-year programme was funded by a Short Breaks Innovation Grant from the Department for Education, and focussed on 4 key areas:
- Thriving Families: Providing more early support for families
- Thriving Minds: Providing more support for children and young people with complex needs, including those exhibiting behaviours of concern
- Thriving Futures: Developing more opportunities for young people aged 16-25
- Thriving Together: Offering more support to providers of play, leisure and childcare to support them to be more inclusive of children and young people with SEND
Key developments
The full programme report and case studies are attached. To summarise, the key changes and achievements were:
Greater focus on early support and inclusion
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SENsational Stay & Play and Short Break sessions have been rolled out at Children & Family Hubs across the borough.
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Support has been provided to over 70 play, leisure and childcare providers to improve inclusive policies and practices through support, training, resource grants and development of an inclusion toolkit
- We have rolled out positive behaviour support (PBS) training and a community of practice for parents, carers and professionals from health, education, social care and community organisations. Over 200 people were trained between June 2024 and June 2025.
Greater range, quantity and quality of short breaks
- New targeted short breaks service offering a wider range of activities to accommodate different ages, interests and needs (including enhanced schemes for children with higher support needs and more activities for 16+)
- Increasing provision from 3 core providers to 17 different types of provision
- Increasing the number of short breaks places from 2600/year to 8050/ year
Improved access and data
- Streamlining registration and booking by introducing a new online booking platform, improving navigation for families, fair access and improved oversight by the local authority
- Increasing the number of unique children and young people accessing short breaks from circa 100 in April 2022 to over 500 in June 2025
Improved access and data
- Streamlining registration and booking by introducing a new online booking platform, improving navigation for families, fair access and improved oversight by the local authority
- Increasing the number of unique children and young people accessing short breaks from circa 100 in April 2022 to over 500 in June 2025
This work was coproduced with Southwark Independent Voice (our local parent carer forum) and other parent representatives. Parents have been involved throughout the programme from the initial proposal development meetings; as members of the working groups overseeing each workstream; on the commissioning and grant-giving panels, and as reviewers of provision and contributors to the inclusion toolkit.