Teen’s respite stay at Rosebud Cottage in Derry being cancelled at less than 24 hours notice

A mother who got less than 24 hours notice her daughter’s respite stay at Rosebud Cottage in Derry was being cancelled has criticised the Western Health and Social Care Trust’s lack of such provision.

Roisin McMackin’s daughter, who has severe learning disabilities, was allocated a two-day stay in Rosebud Cottage in the Racecourse Road area of the city, in May.

However, Ms McMackin was phoned the day before and told her daughter’s respite was being cancelled due to Rosebud Cottage being closed to further admissions for the foreseeable future.

Rosebud Cottage is a four-bed, short-term respite centre. Parents and guardians were informed of its closure during a private meeting with the Trust’s children’s disability managers in the city in June. Derry News understands there is currently one young person housed in the facility.

Roisin McMackin has called on the Trust to build a new respite facility for children and young people with learning disabilities in its area or to repurpose a vacant building from its own estate.

Speaking to The Derry News, Ms McMackin said: “As far back as 2013, MLAs were aware there has not been sufficient bed allocation or respite provision in place for children and young people with learning disabilities, right across the North”.

This claim is supported by the publicly available minutes of the all-party Committee for Health meeting held in Stormont to examine respite services / short breaks on March 13, 2025. The meeting did not include a representative from the Western Health and Social Care Trust.

During that meeting, Mr Maurice Leeson from the Department of Health said: “There are clear demand and capacity gaps for residential and short-breaks services and growing levels of unmet need.

“A key message that we want to communicate today is that short breaks for children with disabilities are fragile. They are fragile because of the volume of children who are in need of the service, the level of risk that families are managing in homes and the lack of suitable residential placements,” said Mr Leeson.

Roisin McMackin highlighted the minutes also revealed, only £1.37 million of the £2 million allocated in the last financial year to “improve residential and short breaks” and “expand family, therapeutic and behavioural supports in the community” had been spent.

“It is shocking an unspent £630,000 was handed back to the Department of Health, yet families in the Western Health and Social Care Trust have been unable to access respite provision for their children or young people in Rosebud Cottage since May, and periodically in Avalon House, an eight-bed respite care facility in Omagh for children and young people,” she said.

“I want to be very, very clear, nobody is blaming any parent. It is absolutely terrible the families of children in Rosebud Cottage and Avalon House have been unable to access respite anywhere else. They should definitely have someplace for their child,” added Ms McMackin.

“However, other families should still be able to access respite when these facilities are not available, for whatever reason. We do not know how long this situation is going to continue but the upshot is there will be no respite for our children and young people, indefinitely.

“With the £630,000 that was handed back to the Health Department, and aware of the situation of parents in the Western Health and Social Care Trust desperate for respite provision for their children and young people, surely a new respite unit could be built? That would be fair. Or failing a new build the Trust could have used that £630,000 to repurpose one of the many vacant buildings in its estate,” said Roisin McMackin.

A Spokesperson for the Western Health and Social Care Trust (Western Trust) said: “The funding referenced was non-recurrent funding across the five HSC Trusts to be spent before the end of the financial year 2024/25. The Western Trust did not return any funding and used it all to offer a wide variety of activities, events and supports to children and their families. This was based on views from previous parents meetings across the Trust area.

“The Children’s Disability teams accessed a number of these activities through Community and Voluntary partners across the Trust area. The feedback from families who used the activities and events was entirely positive and requesting further activities and events going forward.”

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“The Trust continues to provide regular updates to parents via meetings regarding short break provision for children and young people disability services.

“The Short break provision for children and young people’s disability service at Rosebud Cottage (Northern Sector) was temporarily postponed at the end of May 2025 to support a medium term placement. It is anticipated that Rosebud will reopen to provide short break provision shortly to provide short break provision for young people across the Trust geography.

“Avalon House (Southern Sector) continues to provide medium/long term care for a number of children.”

The Spokesperson concluded: “The Trust continues to provide respite through self-directed support arrangements and is based on an individual assessment for each family. The assessed need of any family can change over time and regular reviews are built into the process.”