Children's Home run by Action for Children in Hertfordshire

Good

The children's home provides effective services that meet the requirements for good.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff hold young people at the centre of their practice, ensuring a positive short break experience.  Young people benefit from a wide range of experiences and activities to meet their particularly individual and complex needs.  The home contributes to delivering good outcomes for young people by setting focused and achievable targets, which help improve life skills.  Young people are safe; they do not go missing. Physical intervention has ceased and incidents have significantly reduced.  Staff work closely with parents and the wider professional team. This ensures that young people experience a shared and consistent approach.  Parents and the wider professional team speak highly of the service and the opportunities it affords young people.  A committed, permanent staff team offer young people a reliable and familiar environment where relationships remain consistent.  The staff group feel positive about working at the home and the

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The children's home provision is good because:

contributions they make to the lives of young people.  The inspection has identified a number of shortfalls. The opinions of all parties are not considered and therefore have not contributed to the review of the quality of care of the service. A development plan and workforce plan are not in place. Staff do not have their performance annually appraised within the set timescales and the lack of signatures on records does not demonstrate that staff have full knowledge of their content.

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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 (England) Regulations 2015 and the Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards. The registered person(s) must comply with the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must maintain records ("case records") which are kept up to date and are signed and dated by the author of each entry. (Regulation 36 (1) (b) (c)) 22/02/2016

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Requirement Due date

In order to complete a quality of care review the registered person must establish and maintain a system for monitoring, reviewing and evaluating the quality of care provided for children. This system must provide for ascertaining and considering the opinions of the children, their parents, placing authorities and staff. (Regulation 45 (2) (a) (5)) 30/04/2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees have their performance and fitness to perform their roles appraised at least once every year. (Regulation 33 (4) (c)) 22/02/2016

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further the service should take account of the following recommendation(s): Ensure the report (Regulation 45) clearly identifies any actions required for the next 6 months of delivery within the home and how those actions will be addressed. The whole review process and the resulting report should be used as a tool for continuous improvement in the home. (The Guide to the Quality Standards, page 65 paragraph 15.4)

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Recommendations

Ensure that the registered person has a workforce plan which can fulfil the workforce related requirements of regulation 16, schedule 1 (paragraphs 19 and 20) the plan should:  Detail the necessary management and staffing structure, the experience and qualifications of staff currently working within the staffing structure and any further training required for those staff, to enable the delivery of the homes Statement of Purpose (such as equality and diversity training);  Detail the processes and agreed timescales for staff to achieve induction, probation and any core training (such as safeguarding and health and safety and mandatory qualifications);  Detail the process for managing and improving poor performance;  The plan should be updated to include any new training and qualifications completed by staff while working at the home, and used to record the ongoing training and continuing professional development needs of staff -

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Recommendations

including the homes manager. (The Guide to the Quality Standards, page 53 paragraph 10.8)

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Information about this children's home

The service is managed by a large charitable organisation. It provides short breaks for up to six children with learning difficulties and/or physical disabilities.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

16/06/2015 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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Recent inspection history

08/07/2014 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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Good

The home offers a warm and welcoming environment. Specialised equipment, a soft play area and a well-equipped sensory room offer disabled young people a range of engaging choices, which meet their needs and promoting their enjoyment during their stay. One young person signed: ‘I like coming to the home, I have fun and I enjoy the food.’

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Good

Parents speak highly of the home. It gives their children an opportunity to engage in peer relationships and have fun outside of the family home. They speak highly of the staff team and the care their children receive. Parents also recognise how this provision offers positive benefits and support to the wider family.

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Good

Young people moving into the home experience a good introduction. A planned move offers staff time to meet with the young person, their parents and school to ensure all information and management strategies are in place. Careful matching takes place to ensure that staff safely meet young people’s needs, either within a peer group or as a single placement. A young person’s guide is available in an engaging format and the home provides parents with the statement of purpose. These creative guides help to reduce initial anxieties by offering a range of information in accessible formats.

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Good

Young people accessing the service have a range of complex health needs. All staff are first aid trained and have undertaken medication training. A health plan and medication plan ensure that staff have clear guidance, which enables them to meet all known health requirements. The home works closely with a county nurse who offers regular staff training on health matters.

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Good

Staff work closely with schools. They observe the young people within a classroom setting and close liaison with teaching staff ensures that they provide a consistent approach. It helps the home to identify relevant goals and to set targets accordingly. When young people achieve their targets, they receive a certificate to celebrate their success. This serves to demonstrate the progress young people make. Staff return to school to undertake further observations if new behaviour becomes apparent, to ensure young people receive a consistent approach.

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Good

Staff offer a range of activities for young people to engage in. Apart from the specialised equipment in the home and garden, young people are engaged in a variety of community based activities. Staff have taken specific advice and training from play specialists to ensure that they are meeting the needs of each young person when offering them both social development and fun.

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Good

Young people express their views and contribute to the physical environment. Monthly house meetings enable young people to influence such matters as the decor; they recently chose the colour of the carpets and blinds. They express preferences for the activities they wish to undertake. Staff display the minutes of the meetings in a widget format for all young people to see. Young people play a part in the recruitment of staff. A young person’s panel offers a number of questions to the applicants. This demonstrates how young people’s views are valued. It also recognises the importance of their views when recruiting staff who will be undertaking their personal care.

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Good

During this review period the home has successfully engaged with the transition team. They have supported young people and their families through the transition of leaving the children’s home and moving onto adult services. This has proved particularly beneficial to young people. A social worker said: ‘They have been great, working alongside her new provider, giving them information and offering guidance and support. This approach has very much helped with her smooth transition into her adult placement.’

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Good

The home provides a short break provision to young people with significant learning and physical disabilities and a range of complex needs. This particularly vulnerable group of young people benefit from a familiar and consistent staff team who know their needs.

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Good

Parents report that their children are safe at the home. A parent said: ‘We can relax knowing he is there and he is being well cared for.’ The staff utilise a range of risk assessments to identity potential hazards or areas of specific vulnerability. They provide care accordingly, to ensure that young people become increasingly safe during their stay.

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Good

Managers have reviewed the matching of young people accessing the service to ensure that each individual experience is maximised. In considering the benefits for one particularly disabled and blind young person, her social worker commented: ‘The home offers an expansion of her outer world, so expands her inner world.’ For some young people this resource offers a unique and safe opportunity to be part of an alternative residential experience away from home.

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Good

The revised matching has had a significantly positive impact on physical intervention by staff. There have been no incidents of physical restraint or intervention by staff for the past 10 months. As a result, trusting relationships between young people and staff have developed and continued.

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Good

There has been a significant reduction in the number of recorded incidents. Managers and dedicated staff meet regularly to analyse the recorded data. The analysis has offered significant intelligence into the causes of incidents and how these can be minimised. This positive intervention has seen the recorded incidents drop from 102 in 2014/15 to just 17 at the end of quarter 3 in 2015/16. This offers young people and staff a safer living environment where the short break is enjoyed as it is meant to be; a pleasurable and fun stopover.

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Good

No young person has gone missing from the home or when they are out on a community activity. To ensure young people are safeguarded, robust risk assessments and appropriate levels of staff supervision ensure that high levels of monitoring are in place at all times. The home has a missing procedure in place, which works alongside the local authority missing protocol. Due to the vulnerability of the young people they would be categorised as missing with immediate effect if an episode occurred. The clear prevention strategy and the urgent responses in place protect and safeguard young people.

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Good

No young people accessing the service are believed to be at risk of child sexual exploitation. However, staff have completed training in this area of child abuse, ensuring they are alerted to any signs of risk. Staff are aware and knowledgeable about safeguarding procedures. This ensures the safeguarding of young people and the protection of their wellbeing.

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Good

The home looks after young people with a range of physical disabilities, some of whom have high levels of incapacity. Regular fire drills ensure that evacuation is effective and efficient should a fire break out.

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Requires improvement

The registered manager has held the post for one year and is currently undertaking a level five diploma in leadership and management. She brings a wealth of experience to the role having worked within the care sector for the past 13 years. She has specialised in working with people who have a learning and/or physical disability and has worked with both adults and children.

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Requires improvement

This inspection identified a number of shortfalls in this judgement area. The quality of care is monitored in a timely manner but ascertaining and considering the opinions of parents, placing authorities or staff is not taking place as part of this process. The service does provide opportunities to gain the views of young people; however, these too appear overlooked during this process. The omission of service user’s views and the views of the team around the young person does not provide a robust review of the quality of care delivered. An analytical review of the information is also absent, this results in no plan for the continuous improvement of the service. Some records lack signatures, which fails to demonstrate that staff have full knowledge of their content.

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Requires improvement

Staff receive regular supervision, which is child focused and offers space to consider continued professional development. Staff report that supervision is beneficial to their practice and value the time spent with their supervisor. Some eligible staff have not had their performance and their fitness to perform their roles annually appraised. As such, staff’s performance and development is not considered as part of nor alongside the overall service delivery.

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Requires improvement

Anti-discriminatory practice is a core value and is detailed in the statement of purpose. However, equality and diversity training is a course undertaken by very few staff. This does not support all staff to fully embrace these core values and deliver a service as set out in the statement of purpose.

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Requires improvement

The organisation offers staff a comprehensive training programme. The focus is understandably on topics relating to specific areas of disability and the safeguarding of young people. During this review period staff undertaking a diploma in child care have also gained knowledge in wider theories of child care training, such as attachment theory and child development. This has offered staff an improved knowledge base from which to deliver child centred practice.

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Requires improvement

A real strength of the service is the committed, permanent staff team. Long standing members of staff offer young people a familiar and trusting relationship. Staff report being part of a strong, supportive and stable team. This provides young people with consistent, dependable care, delivered by skilled staff who know them well.

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Requires improvement

Members of staff feel individually valued and experience job satisfaction, which contributes significantly to staff retention. The staff team are motivated to deliver a high quality service to the young people they genuinely care about and meeting their needs is central to daily practice. Managers and staff have a good working relationship with the wider professional team and a desire to deliver results to young people.

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Requires improvement

The selection and recruitment of staff is robust to ensure only suitable adults are employed. A sound induction provides new staff with essential knowledge to begin working in the complex area of child care. Ongoing training enhances awareness and offers new learning. Staff are supported to gain a nationally recognised child care qualification.

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What the inspection judgements mean

The experiences and progress of children and young people are at the centre of the inspection. Inspectors will use their professional judgement to determine the weight and significance of their findings in this respect. The judgements included in the report are made against Inspection of children's homes: framework for inspection.

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What the inspection judgements mean

An outstanding children's home provides highly effective services that contribute to significantly improved outcomes for children and young people who need help and protection and care. Their progress exceeds expectations and is sustained over time. A good children's home provides effective services that help, protect and care for children and young people and have their welfare safeguarded and promoted. In a children's home that requires improvement , there are no widespread or serious failures that create or leave children being harmed or at risk of harm. The welfare of looked after children is safeguarded and promoted. Minimum requirements are in place, however, the children's home is not yet delivering good protection, help and care for children and young people. A children's home that is inadequate is providing services where there are widespread or serious failures that create or leave children and young people being

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What the inspection judgements mean

harmed or at risk of harm or result in children looked after not having their welfare safeguarded and promoted.

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Information about this inspection

Inspectors have looked closely at the experiences and progress of children and young people living in the children's home. Inspectors considered the quality of work and the difference adults make to the lives of children and young people. They read case files, watched how professional staff work with children, young people and each other and discussed the effectiveness of help and care given to children and young people. Wherever possible, they talked to children, young people and their families. In addition the inspectors have tried to understand what the children's home knows about how well it is performing, how well it is doing and what difference it is making for the children and young people who it is trying to help, protect and look after. This 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 Children's

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Information about this inspection

Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and the Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards. the guidance raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted, which is available from Ofsted's website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted . If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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Information about this inspection

achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children's social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, workbased learning and skills training, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It inspects services for looked after children and child protection. If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk . You may reuse this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence , write to the Information Policy Team,

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Information about this inspection

The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk .

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Information about this inspection

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Information about this inspection

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T: 0300 123 1231 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted

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