A grand opening ribbon celebration event took place at Prior’s Close, Slough, on Monday 25 April to welcome the newly refurbished Breakaway children’s respite care home.
“On behalf of all staff working at Breakaway, I would like to extend a warm welcome to children and hope they have a quality time accessing our improved service. This newly furbished unit demonstrates Slough Children First’s continued commitment to providing outstanding care for the children of Slough” Breakaway’s Registered Manager Ranbir Sidhu said.
Upon cutting the ribbon, Councillor Christine Hulme, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Lifelong Learning & Skills “named this ship Breakaway 2 and all who is sailing her.”
“I am delighted to be here today,” Hulme later went on to say. “It’s a fantastic facility and clearly a lot of hard work has gone into planning and organising it. I think they’ve (the staff) done really well, in terms of getting everything together, it’s very coherent. A fantastic place for young people to come and spend some time away from their families and feel at home and also relax as well and socialise with other young people.”
The venue, which is run by Slough Children First (SCF), is a six-bedroom short break unit, providing respite care for children aged 6-18 who have complex needs, a learning and/or physical disability.
Close to local shops and parks, its features include a fully furnished sensory room, spacious lounge area (great for activities, games and movie nights) and a large garden equipped with swings and other play equipment.
The children who access Breakaway may require personal care, medication, additional health care, behavioural support and support with learning and achievements and this type of respite provides them with a safe and stimulating environment to help them achieve their full potential, including through developing independency skills and enhancing social and communication skills. However, Breakaway doesn’t just support individual children, it helps support families and helps them to remain as a family unit.
The respite care home is inclusive and responsive to the individual needs and aspirations of children and their families and has a group of staff from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, who is able to cater to diverse and cultural needs of the children who they look after too and one of the ways in which this can be seen is through the food that is cooked on site.
“We changed he menu in December (2021) to reflect the cultural needs of the children and the children enjoy the food” said Charmaine Mitchell – Residential Care Officer at Breakaway. Special dietary needs are also taken on board in the planning phase of cooking too and as well as the flavours being reflected in the dishes, the quality is too as Breakaway were given a Food Hygiene rating of 5 stars from Slough Borough Council before the refurbishment.
Breakaway has consistently been rated ‘Good with Outstanding elements’ by Ofsted.
It is a testament to see SCF’s hard work come into fruition and how employees across all departments are carrying out its mission of constantly working together to improve the lives of children and young people by protecting, supporting and enabling them to thrive.
This goes hand in hand with their practice framework approach and how these principles can be put together as ‘branches of a tree’ – branches which in return can be seen in the SCF logo which originated at Breakaway, which was formed in 2015, through a child’s design.
