Children's Home run by New Foundations Care Homes Limited in St Helens

Unique reference number SC406636 Inspection date 29/09/2010 Inspector Michelle Moss Type of inspection Key

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Date of last inspection 24/03/2010 Website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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This document may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that the information quoted is reproduced without adaptation and the source and date of publication are stated.

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You can obtain copies of The Children Act 2004, Every Child Matters and The National Minimum Standards for Children’s Services from: The Stationery Office (TSO) PO Box 29, St Crispins, Duke Street, Norwich, NR3 1GN. Tel: 0870 600 5522. Online ordering: www.tso.co.uk/bookshop

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About this inspection

The purpose of this inspection is to assure children and young people, parents, the public, local authorities and government of the quality and standard of the service provided. The inspection was carried out under the Care Standards Act 2000.

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About this inspection

This report details the main strengths and any areas for improvement identified during the inspection. The judgements included in the report are made in relation to the outcomes for children set out in the Children Act 2004 and the relevant National Minimum Standards for the service.

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The inspection judgements and what they mean

Outstanding: this aspect of the provision is of exceptionally high quality Good: this aspect of the provision is strong Satisfactory: this aspect of the provision is sound Inadequate: this aspect of the provision is not good enough

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Brief description of the service

The service is a children’s home and can accommodate up to six children from 10 to 17 years of either gender. However, the home is currently only accommodating up to four children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. It is a large detached property with gardens to the front and rear. It is close to bus stops, two local railway stations, local schools, shops and other amenities. The accommodation includes two lounges, a games room, a computer room, kitchen and dining area and single bedrooms for all children.

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Summary

The overall quality rating is satisfactory.

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Summary

This is an overview of what the inspector found during the inspection.

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Summary

This is the first full inspection since the home's registration. The visit was conducted unannounced and involved assessing all key standards to help form a judgement on the provision of care.

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Summary

Outcomes for children are satisfactory. The care staff ensure that every child receives individual support and care, personal to their needs and situation. However, there are a number of shortfalls that cross over several national minimum standards. These include shortfalls in recording evidence for the vetting of workers, care planning, risk assessing bullying, and notifying significant incidents. Also, not all staff have received training in care and control, care of medicines and safeguarding procedures. Some parts of recording physical interventions fail to capture essential information and staff are not being adequately supervised. Despite these shortfalls children are making good progress in their placements and achieving significant milestones.

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Improvements since the last inspection

Not applicable. This is the first inspection since registration.

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Helping children to be healthy

Children experience a genuine caring and secure relationship with care staff who are committed and supportive. They also receive the necessary support to reflect their personal growth and development. This extends to staff recognising changes in their physical appearance, psychological and social needs associated with growing up and emotional well-being. The home encourages children to develop appropriate awareness of personal health, including nutrition and hygiene. This helps them to build up a greater sense of independence and make informed choices to enhance their well-being. Children have individual health plans that are generally well recorded to help the staff identify any specific medical need. However, not all medical information is included in the plan. Also, it is not updated when changes in treatment occur. This hinders staff being fully aware of health-related matters that require monitoring and treatment, for

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Helping children to be healthy

example, asthma care and changes in treatment for conditions such as eczema. Furthermore, the health plan is not accessible to children to ensure they are able to participate in identifying their own health needs. Despite these shortfalls, the staff actively encourage children to attend health-related appointments and record outcomes of any treatment and advice received.

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Helping children to be healthy

The home implements an effective medication procedure that ensures children receive prescribed medication to promote their health. The staff are aware of the importance of administering medicines safely. However, some staff are administering medication to children before receiving training. More positively, staff are receiving training in the administration of first aid.

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Helping children to be healthy

Children are involved in menu planning, purchasing food and preparing meals. Meals reflect individual preferences and include children being able to explore new dishes.

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Protecting children from harm or neglect and helping them stay safe

Staff are good at helping children feel secure, have self-respect, and feel confident enough to deal with challenges in life. Staff have a clear commitment to safeguarding children. Nevertheless, not all staff have received within their induction, awareness training in the home's child protection procedures. Despite this shortfall the staff team understand their responsibilities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This includes maintaining vigilance in which to protect children from harm. However, the home does not have a robust procedure for notifying the regulatory body of significant events promptly.

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Protecting children from harm or neglect and helping them stay safe

Complaints made by children are taken seriously. They have access to a user-friendly complaints procedure which includes telling them who they can go to outside the home if they wish to raise a concern. Staff sensitively promote children's privacy, including ensuring personal information is appropriately secured. Anti-social behaviour, including bullying is challenged. However, staff have not been afforded awareness training in countering bullying. Furthermore, the home has not undertaken any risk assessment to identify potential times, places and circumstances when the risk of bullying is greatest. This hinders staff being sufficiently skilled to identify triggers and form strategies to reduce or eliminate any potential effect. The staff base their management of children's behaviour on encouraging socially acceptable behaviour. The use of restraint is minimal and seen by staff as a last resort. However, not all staff are trained in care and control. This limits them having

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Protecting children from harm or neglect and helping them stay safe

the required skills to meet the home's procedural guidance on restraint.

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Protecting children from harm or neglect and helping them stay safe

When physical intervention is necessary staff have the required incident log book. However, the book does not capture all required information. For example, it does not cover details of the child's behaviour leading up to the use of restraint or describe the method of restraint used. This absence of detail hinders the home's transparency in their management of children's behaviour. Furthermore, children are not offered the opportunity to express their views and opinions in the records made by staff. This limits children being able to formally record their feelings.

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Protecting children from harm or neglect and helping them stay safe

The home aims to provide a safe and caring environment for children. In order to achieve this, the home completes regular checks on fire, electrical and gas safety. In addition, risk assessments are also completed that include safeguarding children that place themselves at risk of going missing from care.

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Protecting children from harm or neglect and helping them stay safe

The home is inconsistent in auditing applications for the recruitment of new employees. For example, the home does not ensure staff always provide a full employment history or attempt to gain verification of the reasons why previous employment has ended when staff have worked with children and vulnerable adults. The home does not hold all the essential information about staff at the home, including information required to check their identity. This reduces the level of safeguarding necessary to ensure children remain protected.

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Helping children achieve well and enjoy what they do

Children benefit from good levels of individual support to help them develop and sustain friendships and suitable links in the local community. For example, they welcome friends to the home and staff enable them to attend local skate parks, youth clubs and adventure play areas. Children are supported to pursue their own interests and staff ensure that electronic games, films and internet sites are suitable for their age and stage of development.

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Helping children achieve well and enjoy what they do

Staff positively praise and reward children’s efforts to achieve and sustain attendance at school. This includes prompt referral to other agencies to ensure that the right educational placements and professional support are secured. Children’s placement plans and files contain up to date and personalised information about their education, interests, and personal development.

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Helping children achieve well and enjoy what they do

Children also benefit from cultural and learning experiences which build on their interests and extend their education. For example, they have recently visited museums, zoos and a circus. In addition, children are assisted in making appropriate choices of meals, games, clothing, and bedding. They are well supported to begin to establish good eating and sleeping routines and suitable bonds with consistent adults. As a result, children are starting to make progress in their learning, social and emotional development including achieving some significant milestones, such as the length of time in education.

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Helping children make a positive contribution

Each child has a placement plan that gives a good overview of their needs. The plan is designed to be person centred and captures details relating to a child's education, social and some parts of their health needs. The plan also touches on promoting a child's identity. However, the plan does not extend to identifying their religious needs and how these will be met. More positively, children are able to contribute to planning their futures through meaningful consultation and by making informed decisions. All children are supported by a key worker. The key worker plays an essential role in ensuring the placement plan is monitored and reports are produced that reflect a child's progress. The home ensures they fully contribute to all statutory reviews and that children are able to influence decisions that directly affect them.

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Helping children make a positive contribution

Admissions to the home can be either planned or emergency placements. In either case the home recognises the importance of assessing the compatibility of children and ensuring the needs of all can be met.

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Helping children make a positive contribution

Staff are well informed about contact arrangements and any level of safeguarding required. Children are able to contact people important in their lives through direct contact, telephone and by email.

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Achieving economic wellbeing

The home provides homely and comfortable accommodation. It is decorated, furnished and maintained to a high standard. There is a good level of space to enable children to pursue hobbies, socialise or if they prefer, to have time on their own. Children are able to build up life skills that reflect their age, abilities and preferences.

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Achieving economic wellbeing

Children are provided with regular pocket money that they can use to pursue hobbies and learn to manage their own finances.

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Organisation

Staffing levels are sufficient to meet the individual needs of children. All shifts start with handovers to aid staff to receive up-to-date briefings on the care of children. The vast majority of staff members who take charge of the home have substantial experience. Nevertheless, there has been at least one occasion where staff still in their probationary period have been required to take charge.

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Organisation

There is a training programme in place which starts at the commencement of employment. However, there are training gaps in areas which include the care of medicines, care and control, countering bullying and safeguarding. These shortfalls impact on staff being able to conduct their duties with the right level of knowledge and competence to keep children safe and healthy. In addition to these shortfalls, the staff are not receiving supervision at the required intervals. For example, newly appointed staff are not getting fortnightly supervision during their first six months and more experienced staff do not get supervision at least monthly.

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Organisation

Children and their families have access to clear information about the home in a form of a guide. This explains what they can expect from the home. Also, professionals have access to an informative Statement of Purpose that provides them with a detailed picture of the home's aims and objectives and its core function of care.

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Organisation

Children are supported by a manager who holds the right qualifications and has established procedures that monitor the quality of care. This includes completing a monthly quality assurance audit of reports and health and safety. However, the auditing does not extend to recruitment to ensure all staff are suitably vetted to work with children. The home receives regular regulation 33 visits that provide an additional quality assurance mechanism. The Registered Manager uses this critical friend role to drive forward improvements from within.

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Organisation

The promotion of equality and diversity is satisfactory. There is some good work being done to help children sustain their heritage and participate in meaningful consultation with staff. Nevertheless, not all the staff have been afforded training in equality and diversity. Also, equality and diversity is not fully integrated into all parts of the children's care. For example, children do not have accessible health plans, are not fully able to record their feelings about being restrained in records made by staff, or able to gain appropriate levels of understanding about the contents of their care plans.

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Organisation

Children's individual case files are confidentially stored. However, they do not always hold all required information, such as the child and their parents' religious persuasion.

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Statutory Requirements

This section sets out the actions, which must be taken so that the registered person/s meets the Care Standards Act 2000, Children's Homes Regulations 2001 and the National Minimum Standards. The Registered Provider(s) must comply with the given timescales.

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Std. Action Due date

31 ensure staff receive training appropriate to the work they perform. This must include all training set under appendix 2 of 31/12/2010 the national minimum standards (Regulation 27(4)(a)) 33 ensure all matters set out in schedule 6 are checked by the Registered Manager at appropriate intervals (Regulation 34(1)(a) and Schedule 6) 29/10/2010

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Std. Action Due date

27 ensure a full employment history together with a satisfactory written explanation of any gaps in employment is obtained and included in the member of staff's recruitment file. Also, so far as reasonably practicable, verify the reason why previous employment has ended (Regulation 26(6)(b) and Schedule 2(4)(6)) 29/10/2010

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Std. Action Due date

27 ensure a record is held that shows in respect of each person working at the home all essential information is obtained ( Regulation 29(1) and Schedule 4(2)) 29/10/2010

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Std. Action Due date

28 ensure all staff receive appropriate supervision (Regulation 27(4)(a)) 26/11/2010

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Std. Action Due date

20 ensure that without delay, notifications are made to the relevant body for all matters set out under schedule 5 (Regulation 30(1) and schedule 5) 29/10/2010

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Std. Action Due date

35 ensure the religious persuasion of a child and their parents is included in the care records held by the home (Regulation 28(1) and schedule 3(3)(8)) 29/10/2010

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Std. Action Due date

22 ensure the restraint book contains a written record of the child's behaviour leading to the restraint and a description of the restraint used. (Regulation 17(4)(b)(c)) 29/10/2010

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further the registered person should take account of the following recommendation(s):

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Recommendations

 make sure each child has a clear written health plan that covers health monitoring required by staff and any specific health intervention that maybe required, for example asthma care (NMS 12.2)  provide a section within the physical intervention book where children can have their views recorded (NMS 22.14)  provide staff with training in awareness to bullying. Also, that risk assessments are in place of the times, places and circumstances in which the risk of bullying is greatest (NMS 18.2 and 18.5)  make sure within a child's placement plan that their religious needs are recorded including how these needs are to be met (NMS 2.1)  make sure any staff member that takes charge of the home has successfully completed their probationary period. (NMS 29.3)

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