Children's Home run by Crossways Care Ltd in Somerset

Requires improvement

The children's home is not yet delivering good help and care for children and young people. However, there are no serious or widespread failures that result in their welfare not being safeguarded or promoted.

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because:

 The home has not achieved a rating of good since September 2013. Management monitoring locally continues to be a problem, compounded by historical systemic weaknesses within the company. There has been insufficient priority given to complete all the work resulting from the previous inspection.

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because:

 Consequently, recruitment procedures are not yet fully effective. Managers have not used the 15 weeks between the first full inspection and this visit to remedy the deficits in recruitment information. This lack of attention to detail leaves the young people vulnerable to unsafe appointments.

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because:

 The member of staff recently appointed specifically to oversee recruitment administration has been in post for only two months, and has not received training in safer recruitment. This means that although safer systems are under development, these have not yet been fully implemented.

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because:

 Managers do not write risk assessments on new appointments until after the person has been offered the position. In some cases, this important assessment of suitability has not been committed to paper at all. This means that there is no objective evidence that risk assessment routinely informs appointment decisions.

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because:

 The registered manager divides his time between two homes 10 miles apart. This home is primarily managed by the deputy manager, and so the registered manager is not always in day-to-day control.  Local managers have taken action to strengthen the oversight of staff recruitment processes, and some weaknesses found at the previous inspection have been resolved. Key appointments in the senior leadership of the company demonstrate a commitment to change and a positive response to previous inspection findings.  This shows that the home has the potential for further improvement. Two requirements and a recommendation have been made to support this process.

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The children's home strengths

The staff and registered manager have worked hard to build positive relationships with the young person, and to establish the necessary trust to support her capacity to develop attachments. Due to the complexity of the young person’s individual needs, the success of this process has resulted in a recent increase in the number of serious incidents. The staff team are dedicated and resilient in their efforts to weather these incidents. The young person is not particularly positive about the home. Despite this, she has made what external professionals and the home’s managers describe as ‘huge progress’ in terms of her maturity, engagement with education, and her relationships with the staff team since her admission in October 2015. One local authority representative said, ‘I am quite impressed with a number of aspects of the home; the staff’s endeavour and commitment is very evident.’ The young person’s health care needs are met well, and appointments are offered

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The children's home strengths

with all the relevant professionals. The deputy manager has proved determined to source therapeutic help that is acceptable to the young person, and an initial appointment has been held. The significance of this cannot be over-stated for a young person who has previously been unable or unwilling to engage with counselling. The young person is now showing some insight into how counselling might help her. The staff write detailed and effective risk assessments to help them manage the young person’s daily care. Although the young person does not always agree with their content, the manager is willing to spend time explaining the rationale for risk management decisions. He is able to justify each decision made, and his day-to- day strategies are clearly and reliably recorded to support these judgements.

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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

13: The leadership and management standard

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the leadership and management standard, with particular reference to effective management monitoring and oversight, including making a prompt response to inspection findings and reviewing the safety of single person restraints, the registered person must-

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Requirement Due date

(2)(c) ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child. In addition, ensure that when staff lone work with young people there is a rigorous risk assessment undertaken that determines the suitability of this arrangement; (2)(f) understand the impact that the quality of care provided in the home is having on the progress and experiences of each child and use this understanding to inform the development of the quality of the care provided in the home; (2)(h) use monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. 31/03/2016

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Requirement Due date

32.—(1) The registered person must recruit staff using recruitment procedures that are designed to ensure children's safety. (2) The registered person may only— (a) employ an individual to work at the children's home; or (b) if an individual is employed by a person other than the registered person to work at the home in a position in which the individual may have regular contact with children, allow that individual to work at the home, if the individual satisfies the requirements in paragraph (3). (3) The requirements are that— (a) the individual is of integrity and good character; 31/03/2016 (b) the individual has the appropriate experience, qualification and skills for the work that the individual is to perform; (c) the individual is mentally and physically fit for the purposes of the work that the individual is to perform; and (d) full and satisfactory information is available in relation to the individual in respect of each of the matters in Schedule 2.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that prospective employees are subject to effective written risk assessments prior to a job offer being made, and that they are completed retrospectively on existing employees, where there are offences and other potential risks.

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Requirement Due date

Also, ensure that efforts are made to resolve all gaps in recruitment information for existing employees retrospectively, so that there is full information in line with Schedule 2 for everyone working in the children’s home. (Regulation 32 (1) – (3) and Schedule 2)

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RECOMMENDATION

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

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RECOMMENDATION

Ensure that the company maintains good employment practice. The registered person must ensure that recruitment, supervision and performance management of staff safeguards children and minimises potential risks to them. In particular, ensure that the person responsible for auditing recruitment checks has ‘safer recruitment’ training, and record the detail of the reference verification conversations with the referee. (Guidance to the Children’s Homes Regulations (April 2015) paragraph 13.1)

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Information about this children's home

This children's home is privately owned. It is registered to provide care and accommodation for one child who may have emotional and behavioural difficulties or learning disabilities.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

05/03/2015 CH - Interim declined in effectiveness

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Recent inspection history

26/02/2014 CH - Interim Satisfactory Progress

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requires improvement

At the full inspection on 4 November 2015, the home was judged to be inadequate in all areas. Serious weaknesses were found in relation to safeguarding and the management of the home, which had a major impact on the quality of care. Following that inspection, the registered persons prepared an action plan to respond to the identified shortfalls in the service. A monitoring visit carried out on 7 January 2016 found that a number of improvements had been made. This inspection has found that there are still significant deficits in the management monitoring of the home. Although these still have the potential to adversely affect the young person’s welfare and safety, there is sufficient improvement to justify the overall grade of ‘requires improvement’. The effectiveness of leaders and managers remains inadequate. This is because the young person still does not have the security of working with a fully checked,

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requires improvement

robustly-recruited staff team. Leaders and managers have made some changes which will, in time, bring about improvements, but they have not tackled retrospectively the shortfalls found at the previous full inspection. Management monitoring still falls short of the standard required for a good service. Restraint and incident records do not always tally; not all significant events are recorded as incidents, and there has been insufficient overview and analysis of an inappropriate restraint. This means that the home’s management arrangements are not robust. The previous full inspection found deficits in staff training and experience, with a lack of clarity about which of two staff should be leading a shift. The company has now provided staff training in key areas. This has equipped staff with some basic knowledge in how to meet the young person’s unique individual needs.

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requires improvement

There was previously a concern that only male staff were working on shift with a female young person. The home’s managers have responded to this by ensuring that wherever possible, male and female staff are on shift together. There have been no shifts covered solely by male staff since the staffing ratio was recently increased to a ratio of two staff to one young person.

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requires improvement

A requirement was made at the previous full inspection to remove a large metal bar placed on the outside the young person’s bedroom window. The bar was removed soon after the previous inspection, so this is a clear improvement, and makes the home’s appearance domestic, rather than institutional in character.

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requires improvement

The young person’s care plans and risk assessments are well written and detailed. They provide staff with all the information that they need to care for the young person, but she is not particularly happy with them, and disputes some of the factual information. It is difficult for her to appreciate that the staff are only concerned about her welfare and safety.

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requires improvement

During the inspection, staff were sharing information from the young person’s file with her, and explaining their strategies clearly. The manager showed considerable skill in engaging with the young person and encouraging her to talk about her views. He was prepared to negotiate on some points, but stood firm on others where safety could be compromised by any change of plan.

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requires improvement

A local authority manager praised the home’s efforts to engage the young person in education, because she has not previously been willing to attend school prior to this placement. There has been a recent reduction in school attendance, from 99% to around 60%, but if staff can maintain their current approach and clear messages to support her engagement with education, this may be a temporary situation.

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requires improvement

The young person is extremely intelligent, with ambitions to become legally qualified and work as a defence barrister. Strong, transparent boundaries are very important in helping her to achieve the self-regulation and determined focus that she will need to follow her chosen career. The young person has taken active steps to work with her teachers to find out more about what she needs to achieve to qualify in law. She has also completed a first aid qualification and a three-month youth offending team referral.

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requires improvement

The young person has previously struggled to accept any form of counselling, but has recently attended an initial appointment with a specialist service which provides help and support for victims of sexual abuse, exploitation and trauma. She has also accepted a referral to the local child and adolescent mental health service to further support her; an option that she has previously refused.

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requires improvement

Managers have now dealt with the previous inspection’s findings that some of the adults who were working with the young person had been dismissed from care work or had criminal convictions. The company no longer employs one of the persons whose employment history was of concern. The other person is part of the bank staff group, and there is still no written risk assessment on file to support the decision to employ them. There is no suggestion that any individual members of staff are unsafe to be with young people, but the information identified as missing at the previous inspection has not been obtained retrospectively.

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requires improvement

After a long period in placement with a steady improvement in behaviour, the young person is now beginning to go missing and test boundaries within the home. This means that she is at theoretical risk from all the hazards that can befall young people who are not under direct staff supervision. Child sexual exploitation is a significant risk, although the young person refutes this. There is no direct evidence that this is taking place, but the staff are appropriately concerned and have notified the relevant authorities.

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requires improvement

There have been three missing-from-home incidents in the past two weeks, the first of which involved the young person staying out all night. This is a pattern of behaviour that was evident in previous placements, so it is not new, and is no reflection of the quality of care within this home. When the young person goes missing, the staff follow her as far as possible, and involve the police appropriately. A police officer attended a review recently, to help to draw together a support plan to reduce the risks to the young person.

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requires improvement

The staff have now received training in child sexual exploitation and e-safety. This has equipped them with some basic knowledge in protecting the young person from risks associated with going missing and with unguarded internet use. Some of the recent deterioration in behaviour has been in response to staff challenging the young person over contacts on social networking sites.

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requires improvement

There have been very few restraints in the home, but one is of concern. One member of staff, who was working alone before the staffing ratio was increased to two to one, physically intervened after an attempt to terminate an inappropriate contact by verbal means had failed.

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requires improvement

The managers monitored this action and correctly advised that it would have been safer to switch off the Wifi than engage in a confrontation with the young person. Although the restraint was done for reasons of self-defence, it failed and led to a potentially hazardous unauthorised manoeuvre. This could have precipitated an injury to one or both participants. The restraint record shows that there was a failed restraint, but does not record that the young person had to be lowered to the floor by their arm. These details are in the incident report, but the managers had not identified and amended the disparity between these records.

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requires improvement

The manager has now completed the location risk assessment, which provides a clear assessment of the local environment around the home. He has also completed the lone working risk assessment, but the latter was in generic format until it was updated during the inspection itself. The document initially shown to the inspector did not reflect the risks posed by this individual young person.

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requires improvement

Managers have responded promptly to any allegations made against members of staff. Disclosures made by the young people have been passed on appropriately to the local authority designated officer.

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inadequate

The impact and effectiveness of leaders and managers remains inadequate because they have failed to take personal responsibility for the quality of staff recruitment information and related risk assessments over the past 15 weeks since the previous full inspection.

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inadequate

The inspection in November 2015 found that recruitment procedures were inadequate. These processes were managed through a central human resources department, and the head of care, registered manager and his deputy did not have sufficient oversight to ensure compliance with safe vetting procedures. When the files for newly-appointed staff came into the home from the human resources department, managers did not rigorously review these to ensure that suitable staff had been appointed, but trusted to the centralised procedures that they already knew were unreliable.

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inadequate

The company has appointed a member of staff to work in the local head office, who has the necessary attention to detail to improve recruitment systems for the homes in the company’s south west division. He is making good progress with developing new systems to improve recruitment practice for new staff. This person has only been in post for eight weeks and has inherited a large legacy of staff files that have gaps in the information.

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inadequate

The managers did respond to the most significant hazards pointed out during the previous inspection, and moved on the staff concerned. This was the absolute minimum action required. Managers made it clear during the present inspection that they had not realised that it was necessary to review the files for existing staff and obtain the missing information. This means that there are some staff who were identified at the previous inspection who still have deficits in their personnel information. For example, two staff both had one very weak reference, where the previous employer had ticked boxes and made no comments. In such circumstances, a third reference should have been obtained, but this did not happen. This response demonstrates that while the quality of day-to-day care for the young people is not in question, the lack of commitment to accuracy and attention to detail in administrative systems leaves the service vulnerable to the risks of

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inadequate

Managers have not fully acknowledged the concerns raised at the previous inspection about risk assessments on new staff. They explained that they run through the risks and benefits of each appointment in their minds immediately after the interview, but this is not always committed to paper. This inspection found that a member of the bank staff identified at the previous visit still did not have a risk assessment on file. A newly-appointed member of staff has not been subject to a formal risk assessment process before being offered the job. This person has already started their induction.

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inadequate

The home’s managers have responded to a number of requirements raised at the previous inspection. Staff scheduled to lead shifts now have sufficient competence and experience to do so safely. The home has a stable, core staff team who have now all received basic training in child sexual exploitation and e-safety. Staff now receive effective supervision, and this is up to date. The two newest staff members have not yet started in the home, so it was not possible to assess their level of supervision.

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inadequate

The provider does move staff between homes to support individual young people and cover vacant shifts, these staff work alongside core team members. The number of different staff working with this young person has therefore reduced.

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inadequate

The home has a registered, qualified manager who divides his time between this house and another home, 10 miles away. The deputy manager, who is well on the way to completing her level 5 award in leadership and management, has been managing many of the day-to-day tasks within the home. There is a medium-term plan for her to apply to register to manage this service.

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inadequate

The registered manager is not in day-to-day control of both his homes. With the complexity of the young people’s needs in residential homes, and changes in regulatory requirements, shared management arrangements that might have been effective some years ago are now becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The role of the current registered manager is under review, with a plan to close his other home due to the ending of the lease on the property. Discussion took place during the inspection about how the registration for this home should be managed.

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inadequate

Current management arrangements are insufficiently robust, and the Regulation 45 report prepared on this home shortly before the previous inspection did not identify any shortfalls or areas for action. This means that managers are not yet critically evaluating the service and identifying areas for improvement for themselves.

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inadequate

This suggests that the managers may benefit from closer mentoring and support from senior leaders, to support rigorous management practice. Discussion took place during this inspection about whether management time is spread too thinly. It is positive that the senior leadership team has been strengthened by a recent appointment of a managing director for children’s services.

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inadequate

The Regulation 44 reports continue to provide a comprehensive analysis of the home. The latest report recommended some improvements to the home’s décor, and this had been acted upon. The young person commented that the new pictures and ornaments had been put in place the day before this inspection.

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inadequate

The home’s managers work well with the placing authority and other agencies. Communication is good, and the placing authority professionals are pleased with the service and the outcomes for their young person. The home has good links with the police and the company school. This helps to promote positive outcomes for the young people.

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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

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Information about this inspection

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Information about this inspection

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Information about this inspection

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