In 1994 a new law, the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS), was passed in Sweden. Accessibility to respite care service is a legal right for families with children with disabilities primarily aimed at giving parents and caregivers relief from care in daily life. The aim of this short report is to illustrate how the municipalities meet the families’ need of support, to study the differences between the results from two data collections (1988 and 1994) and to reveal if and how the priorities have changed over time. The results show that there is a great need of respite care in families of children with disabilities and that there is a lack of case managing from the local authorities. Many municipalities had made an inventory of the need for support. A critical question is: to what extent can parents influence decisions concerning respite staff? To conclude, a need for developing well‐functioning models for respite care service is stressed.