Respite Care

[jcar]

Hello

I am an Ofsted Registered Childminder based in Didcot, Oxfordshire and as part of my services I offer respite care to children with disabilities.

I have experience of disabilties including ADHD, ADD, GDD, Autism, Aspergers and Downs Syndrome.

As I am a registered childminder I have also had various training including Specialist Safeguarding and Paediatric first aid.

I am after some advice on where I could advertise my respite service so parents know I exist basically. Its really hard as the County Council offer a resite service but through foster caring, and personally this has got to end up more costly for parents in the long run.

I would be really interested to hear from parents to know if you have respite care for your child, where you found it, are you and your child happy with it and would you use a private respite carer?

Thank you so much :)

Our local support group for parents of autistic children has a newsletter and this sometimes has details of respite carers

We have had respite in the past through social care. I would consider a private carer especially if they can be more flexible as I found the council arranged care very rigid in terms of arranging number of nights and times etc. in terms of advertising I would consider putting up info in doctor surgery and other places like that and maybe also asking local special schools whether you could put something in newsletter or at least make their parents aware. I have to admit I have never considered that childminders might provide this kind of service. I suppose my only concern would be whether they really could cope with my ds who is at the severe end of the spectrum.