Children's Home run by Horizon Care Limited in Staffordshire

Unique reference number SC062406 Inspection date 28/09/2011 Inspector Rachel Ruth Britten Type of inspection Full Provision subtype Children's home

p.1

Date of last inspection 07/03/2011 Website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

p.1

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.

p.2

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 to assess the effectiveness of the service and to consider how well it complies with the relevant regulations and meets the national minimum standards.

p.3

About this inspection

The report details the main strengths, any areas for improvement, including any breaches of regulation, and any failure to meet national minimum standards. The judgements included in the report are made against the Inspections of children’s homes – framework for inspection (March 2011) and the evaluation schedule for children's homes.

p.3

The inspection judgements and what they mean

Outstanding : a service that significantly exceeds minimum requirements Good : a service that exceeds minimum requirements Satisfactory : a service that only meets minimum requirements Inadequate : a service that does not meet minimum requirements

p.3

Brief description of the service

This children's home is operated by a private company. It is located in a rural area on the outskirts of a large town and accommodates up to three young people. The home specialises in offering a service for young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties who are placing themselves or others at risk of harm. Both emergency and planned placements are permitted.

p.4

Overall effectiveness

The overall effectiveness is judged to be outstanding .

p.4

Overall effectiveness

The home is proving immensely successful in all aspects of its provision. Care is extremely well planned and highly personalised to the individual needs of each young person in residence. As a result, there are exceptional outcomes for each one of them. Young people know that they are making great progress from their starting points. They are able to say how much they feel at home here and how well all of the staff support them. Young people's views are also evident in their improving social behaviour and in their positive engagement with staff.

p.4

Overall effectiveness

The quality of relationships between staff and young people is excellent. Staff are exceptionally caring, supportive, committed and skilled. They have regular access to high quality training, support and professional advice which they successfully apply in their daily roles with young people. They have excellent support from managers who are energetic, ambitious and well organised role models. As a result, young people with significant attachment difficulties are enabled to manage their behaviour difficulties well and build functioning relationships with adults and peers inside and outside the home.

p.4

Overall effectiveness

Managers and staff are skilled in identifying and balancing each young person's safeguarding needs. They are competent from the outset in ensuring that any new admission does not compromise resident young people's safety. They create a safe, nurturing and homely physical environment with one-to-one staffing levels. This is well balanced with individualised working to ensure that each young person is appropriately challenged to develop trust, confidence and take manageable risks. As a result, young people feel safe and are safe.

p.4

Overall effectiveness

There are no shortfalls which have a significantly adverse impact on the quality of care, safeguarding or outcomes for young people. There are minor omissions in the records of recruitment systems, but not in recruitment practice itself. There are also minor omissions in the young people's guide and some of the wording used is more suited to adults than children.

p.4

Recommendations

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

p.5

Recommendations

 ensure that the children's guide is as accessible as possible and contains full enough information about the what the home does, for example, about positive behaviour management, house alarms and searches, and how to contact persons to whom they can complain or take concerns (NMS 13.4 and 13.5)  ensure that the home's record of the recruitment and vetting checks specifically includes the level of the CRB disclosure and the outcome of it. Also ensure that the recruitment system shows effectively how recruitment decisions have been reached, in particular, how any concerns about suitability, including criminal convictions, have been reached. (NMS 16.3.b. and NMS 16.5)

p.5

Outcomes for children and young people

Outcomes for children and young people are outstanding .

p.5

Outcomes for children and young people

Young people make exceptional progress to develop a positive self view, emotional resilience and knowledge and understanding of their background. Their psychological health has also benefitted enormously due to the skilled, nurturing and consistent care they receive from staff who work extremely effectively alongside psychologists in the home. For example, young people are able to cope with contact visits to relatives who have previously posed significant risks to them. They are able to sustain peer relationships with friends, including sharing their home and some holidays with them as well as free time in the community. They are able to negotiate with one another about leisure activities in the home and enjoy group outings to theme parks and music concerts. Young people are increasingly able to understand the impact of their behaviours on others and to take responsibility for sharing, helping, compromising, waiting and listening. These are indicators of much improved

p.5

Outcomes for children and young people

Young people are making outstanding progress with their emotional and physical health. This is because the staff encourage an active, healthy lifestyle in the home and teach young people how to take increasing responsibility for their own good health. Staff successfully engage young people in choosing and preparing meals and eat at least once a day all together, sitting at the table. Young people have individualised healthy eating programmes and free access to fruit for snacks at any time. They play badminton and basketball outside in the garden and have undertaken safe cycling awards so that they can cycle around the local lanes. They belong to dance, drama and sports clubs according to their individual interests. They receive consistent, well organised attention to all their medical and personal health and hygiene needs, including first aid and homely remedies, all of which have enabled huge improvements in their physical and emotional health.

p.5

Outcomes for children and young people

Young people are accessing full-time education in the community and have very good attendance at school and college. This represents exceptional progress from their starting points. Young people are also participating in, and enjoying, college courses designed to accommodate their individual interests, such as, farming and the performing arts. Courses are also tailored as applicable to young people's identified learning and mental health difficulties. As a result, young people are gaining enormously in social confidence and competence and are gradually overcoming their anxieties. The educational and vocational achievement of young people is exceptional, taking into account their starting points at the time of placement.

p.6

Outcomes for children and young people

Most young people who have moved on from the home into adult life have made a successful transition to adulthood. In addition, some young people are preparing for imminent transition to supported living for adults with learning and mental health difficulties. Young people are well prepared and positive about this move, which again represents huge progress from their starting points. Their ability to talk about moving, to prepare their things and take part in farewells is highly significant progress. Equally significant is their ability to discuss how they will manage meeting new carers and use their time and money.

p.6

Quality of care

The quality of the care is outstanding .

p.6

Quality of care

Young people enjoy exceptionally positive and constructive relationships with staff and behave very appropriately, given their difficulties. They are also able to live harmoniously together with their peers, despite their varying needs. These effective relationships result from the skill and commitment of both long-standing and newer members of staff. All staff work with each young person and are very effectively guided and supported by the managers to do their jobs. Staff have developed enormous insight into young people's individual needs and behaviours, aided by regular input from a visiting psychologist who advises and works directly with staff and young people in individualised ways. All this enables staff to establish and maintain both highly effective team work and stable, consistently caring relationships that hugely benefit young people's health, education and personal identity.

p.6

Quality of care

Staff have consistently high aspirations for all children and young people in the home. They ensure that young people are central to the decisions and activities of the home. They engage them and include them in all the normal routines of running a home and encourage them to participate in meetings, group activities and household chores, such as shopping and clearing up after meals. Staff convey to young people at every opportunity the positive steps that they are taking. They praise and support all their efforts and advocate for them whenever necessary. For example, they take young people to rehearsals for shows they are in and help them with practising. They offer to support them directly in the classroom and/or during transition to adult living, in order to help them secure their place in education or in suitable adult placements in the community. Staff plan celebrations and parties for birthdays or moves alongside all young people and enable them to see their favourite

p.6

Quality of care

singers or bands. Similarly, young people are involved in choosing the décor of the house and their rooms and in inviting friends and family to visit. As a result, young people feel that their views, wishes and feelings are actively sought and that they influence the running of the home

p.7

Quality of care

Young people are cared for in line with their individual placement plan, and the contribution of the home to those plans is of very high quality. Young people are involved in their reviews and have regular access to professionals, both assigned and independent, to ensure that their views are heard and that they can complain. Staff are also extremely successful in helping young people to spend quality time with people who are significant to them. Moreover, they are highly effective in supporting young people to understand and cope with the complexities of some of their relationships. This is because staff are proactive and imaginative in finding ways to support young people, using one-to-one time in suitable contexts, often whilst engaging in another activity. This means that support is subtly provided and the adult input is less threatening to the young person.

p.7

Safeguarding children and young people

The service is outstanding at keeping children and young people safe and feeling safe.

p.7

Safeguarding children and young people

Young people feel very safe here and are very safe. This is because staff are carefully selected and vetted to ensure that they are suitable to join the staff team. Young people are involved in this process too and can give their views about who they would like working with them. There is a robust approach to vetting and monitoring all visitors to the home, which also keeps young people safe. There is a proportionate approach to risk assessment and security in the environment. This takes account of the needs and characteristics of the young people cared for, and correctly balances actual health and safety risks with a good emphasis upon reducing an institutional feel. As a result, security and safety is largely provided by high staffing levels, vigilance and competence, rather than locks, alarms and signage. For example, at present, young people may use any part of their home during the day and are allowed to come into the office when staff are present. Similarly, regular fire

p.7

Safeguarding children and young people

practises and informing visitors about what to do if there is an emergency, means that additional signage is not needed around the house. Young people's individual risk assessments support their safety particularly well and are effectively used to inform key working sessions and help young people progress towards safer, healthier behaviour and taking increasing managed risks.

p.7

Safeguarding children and young people

Young people have a strong sense of safety and well-being because staff protect them well from significant harm. Staff are well trained in child protection, accident and emergency procedures and they do not work in isolation either from one another, or from other professionals involved with each young person. Staff teach young people about both their rights and their responsibilities in terms of behaviour and keeping themselves safe. This teaching includes how to behave safely with familiar adults, peers, or out in the community. Young people have individualised, clear and positive behaviour incentives which are consistently applied by all staff. Staff spend high quality time with young people and are always positive and respectful towards them. This helps young people to succeed and to manage their behaviour with increasing success. As a result, young people's behaviour has stabilised enormously and negative attention seeking behaviour is significantly

p.7

Safeguarding children and young people

reduced. Unwanted behaviour, including going missing, is rare. Similarly, physical restraint is used, if at all, only in the most exceptional of circumstances and in strict accordance with the legislative framework, including the accurate and clear recording of restraint and the reasons for its use.

p.8

Leadership and management

The leadership and management of the children's home are outstanding .

p.8

Leadership and management

Managers consistently communicate high expectations to staff about sustaining improvement. They are tireless and enthusiastic about the progress that young people can make whilst living here. Managers channel the efforts that staff make by providing them with highly effective support, supervision, appraisal and training. As a result, skill levels and morale are high because staff feel valued and their successes in practice are seen, encouraged and celebrated. Particular strengths are the quality of systems for daily handover and for regular input from an independent psychologist. Excellent professional relationships underpin all meetings and processes and in turn assure maximum resultant benefits to young people.

p.8

Leadership and management

Managers routinely make good use of a range of rigorous monitoring activities relating to the quality of care provided and improving outcomes for children and young people. This includes monitoring the records required by Schedule 6 of the Regulation 34. Managers benefit from particularly insightful and robust Regulation 33 reports, provided by an independent visitor to the home. Again, excellent professional relationships exist between managers and this visitor, ensuring that any ideas, weaknesses and strengths that are identified are given prompt and committed attention. Managers then diligently link these to their own development planning and monitoring systems. They include staff views and ideas and capitalise on all changes so that the positive impact on outcomes for children is maximised.

p.8

Leadership and management

The home has been performing consistently well for some time and was not given any requirements or recommendations at the previous inspection. Nevertheless, inspection reports are effectively used to evaluate where there are areas for improvement and the process of inspection and regulation is positively welcomed by the manager. Particular effort is being made at present by managers and staff to focus on the messages contained in the new minimum standards about inclusion and young people's views, wishes and feelings. The manager has tried various ways to engage young people more in their files and records, and more in the running of the home, for example, the interviewing of new staff. The manager tirelessly seeks new ways to maintain high levels of engagement and is innovative and realistic about what works and what does not work for the individual young people living in this home.

p.8

Leadership and management

The provider meets the aims and objectives in the Statement of Purpose and young people's guide and keeps them under regular review. The children's guide can be made available in a number of different languages and formats, but overall the words used in it are rather adult and not easy or inviting to young people. Some useful information is missing. The impact of this is minimal because staff clearly and sensitively explain the contents of the guide and all aspects of how the home runs to each new young person coming to the home.

p.8

Leadership and management

The home is well resourced, indicating the financial viability of the provider. Facilities, furniture, vehicles and housekeeping costs are generous and well managed to maximise the benefits to young people. Similarly, staffing levels are high and staff are well qualified. They are also extending their professional qualifications and development. This is a key strength of the setting and results in a high quality service to young people. Records are clear, up to date and stored securely, contributing to a detailed understanding of each young person's life. Staff are particularly diligent in helping young people take photos and keep memorabilia of their own experiences in placement. Some key pieces of information about vetting and recruitment decisions concerning staff and their criminal records checks are not clearly tracked on the staff files held in the home. However, the impact of this is small because the actual recruitment processes are robust and all details are

p.9

Leadership and management

available in the organisation's main office to demonstrate this.

p.9

Leadership and management

Equality and diversity practice is outstanding .

p.9