Moorcroft School

Pield Heath House RC School, Pield Heath Road, UXBRIDGE, Middlesex, UB8 3NW

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Inspection dates 14 October 2015 to 16 October 2015

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Outstanding 1

The quality of care and support Outstanding 1 How well children and young people are protected Outstanding 1

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Outstanding 1

The impact and effectiveness of leaders and managers Outstanding 1

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The residential provision is outstanding because

 Under a visionary and highly competent leadership and management team, the school has a tremendously positive impact on the young people who use the residential provision.   The stable residential team of experienced, passionately dedicated and highly skilled staff empower young people to strive towards achieving their full potential.  Young people receive exceptional quality of care that is child-centred, personalised, insightful, holistically planned, systematically executed and effective.  Young people have their needs met and their life-chances expanded. The exceptionally positive experiences that they have through the residential provision enrich their lives. They make exceptional progress across all aspects of their welfare and development.  Young people are safe at the residence. Excellent safeguarding practice is fully embedded. The risk management is proactive, fluid and highly effective. There

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The residential provision is outstanding because

have been no significant incidents.  All aspects of the residential provision are of a high quality and exceed the standard of good. The school’s collaborative approach to behaviour management, inclusion work, transitional support and the practice in relation to equality and diversity are exemplary.  The young people, their parents and social workers give exceptionally positive feedback.

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schools

The school meets the national minimum standards for residential special schools.

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schools

What does the school need to do to improve further?  enhance further the quality of the records kept on young people’s files. Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 2 of 11

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Information about this inspection

The school had less than four hours’ notice of inspection. The inspection activities included spending time with young people and having meal with them and staff in the residential house; observing the care practice; the tour of the school and the residence; discussions with the school’s leaders, managers and staff both on the educational and residential side and telephone conversations with two social workers and three parents. The inspector scrutinised a wide range of records and some policies. She took into the account the information gathered from Parent View.

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Inspection team

Seka Graovac Lead social care inspector Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 3 of 11

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Information about this school

Pield Heath School is a non-maintained co-educational day and residential special school in West London. The school provides education for 82 children and young people who have complex needs, moderate to severe learning difficulties and associated communication problems. The residential accommodation is located within the school grounds. It is available for young people aged 14-19 years, from Monday to Thursday. Currently 18 young people make use of residence. The great majority of them use the residential provision for short-breaks. The school was founded on the Christian ethos by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. They remain the trustees. Last inspection of the residential provision was in March 2015. Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 4 of 11

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Inspection Judgements

The overall experiences and progress of children and young people Outstanding

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Inspection Judgements

Young people make outstanding progress across all aspects of their welfare. They have highly enjoyable experiences that provide them with extensive opportunities for learning and development. They benefit from being with other young people in a calm and orderly environment that is infused with unreserved respect and acceptance. Various professionals and parents say that at the core of the young people’s amazing progress is that the young people feel genuinely cared for and loved by the staff.

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Inspection Judgements

Young people say that they are happy and feel safe at the residence. They have formed deeply trusting and positive relationships with residential staff. They know that they must listen to the staff, but they also feel being valued, acknowledged and heard themselves. They understand that the staff have young people’s best interest at heart at all times. They have been increasingly able to listen and express themselves in a constructive manner. Their communication skills have increased exponentially and they have formed friendships. Their behaviour has improved and they are increasingly able to make safer choices.

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Inspection Judgements

Young people have excellent opportunities to engage in an exceptionally wide range of activities within the school buildings and in the secure extensive grounds. Keeping physically and mentally active helps them to manage their energy and promotes their health effectively.

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Inspection Judgements

Young people enjoy having tasty and nutritious meals. Eating in the company of others teaches them about good table manners. Thanking for the food before each meal calms them and sets a tone around a shared appreciation.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff support young people to access the community resources and to attend various facilities and clubs. This helps them to develop their interests, personal and social skills and confidence. As a result, their individuality has been strengthened and they have achieved greater integration into mainstream society.

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Inspection Judgements

Young people make fantastic progress in acquiring independent living skills, including those relating to self-care, care for the environment, cooking, budgeting, travelling and maintaining one’s health and safety. All young people who left the residence at the end of the school year have continued to successfully pursue their chosen career-paths.

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Inspection Judgements

The quality of care and support Outstanding

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Inspection Judgements

All aspects of the residential provision are of high quality and exceed the standard of good. The collaborative approach across the school and with the external professionals and parents contribute to the young people consistently receiving care of exceptional quality. The care is child-centred, personalised, insightful, holistically planned, systematically executed and effective. Young people have their needs met and the life- chances enhanced. Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 5 of 11 Residential staff provide a nurturing and stimulating environment that supports young people exceptionally well in all aspects of their wellbeing and progress. The care is flexibly tailored around the young people’s needs and their continued learning. Their individual targets take into account their wishes and capabilities. The targets are specific, stretching, clearly linked with their individual educational targets and achievable. Staff

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Inspection Judgements

use every opportunity to help young people to achieve those targets. They carefully monitor the progress and joyfully celebrate achievements.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff have a strong commitment towards the young people. They always reflect on their practice and search for better ways of working with individual young people. While emphasising the high quality of the partnership working, a social worker said that the staff would do anything to help young people make better progress. The school has never excluded any child. Staff have always found the way to reach the children and young people who had been excluded from other schools and to enable them to start engaging and making progress. The school’s inclusion work and transitional support are exemplary.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff effectively support young people’s cultural and spiritual identity. They consistently teach young people about the importance of respect and tolerance. Through their work, staff exemplify and teach young people about British values. The equality and diversity practice is excellent.

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Inspection Judgements

The arrangements for medication and for promoting young people’s health are sound. Staff work closely with the school’s therapeutic team and complex needs specialists. A clinical psychologist visits young people at the school to provide additional specialist support, when it is needed.

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Inspection Judgements

The accommodation is very comfortable, well maintained and clean. Young people have access to the extensive school facilities, such as the library, looking-good room and music, dance, arts and crafts and sport facilities. The school grounds are safe and extremely well-equipped. The recent addition of a mobility cycle track, together with a bus-stop and a zebra-crossing assists with the development of young people’s motor- coordination, travelling skills and road-safety awareness. It also fosters the feelings of adventure and achievement.

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Inspection Judgements

How well children and young people are protected Outstanding

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Inspection Judgements

High safeguarding awareness, great working together, dynamic management of risks and exceptionally effective behaviour management contribute to the outstanding safeguarding practice at the school. There have been no significant incidents or accidents.

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Inspection Judgements

The school has effective links with Children’s Services and the Local Safeguarding Children Board. Through regular training, staff keep their practice up to date. Timely multi-professional meetings around the child contribute to the personalised, unified and consistent approach to promoting young people’s health and welfare. The managers value transparency and work closely with other professionals to make sure that they use only the best safeguarding practice. Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 6 of 11 Through positive relationships, staff enable young people to develop feelings of trust and safety. In addition to providing constant reassurance and positive engagement, staff keep firm and consistent boundaries. They effectively challenge any intimidating, discriminatory and negative behaviours. They help young people to understand the impact of their behaviour on themselves and on others. Staff support young people to

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Inspection Judgements

develop positive attitudes, such as kindness, care and empathy towards others.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff are creative at finding strategies that enable residential students to accept the house-rules and behavioural boundaries. An example of this is using a ball-game to help the young person to understand the importance of keeping to the rules and to the physical boundaries. Staff are highly effective at promoting positive behaviours and in the use of de-escalation strategies.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff have excellent understanding of the young people’s vulnerabilities and the underpinning disabilities and emotions. They vigilantly anticipate any risks and plan accordingly to minimise those risks while respecting young people’s individualism. They gently and decisively lead young people away from challenging behaviours and towards adopting safer behaviours. They are effective at promoting young people’s safer choices. The risk management is proactive, fluid and highly effective.

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Inspection Judgements

Regular health and safety checks ensure that the catering arrangements and the physical environment remain safe at all times. There are a number of spaces that are designated as safe areas. Young people know that this is where they can go if they need to be on their own, to calm down and relax. They have been using these areas effectively. The characteristics of the physical environment contribute to the young people’s sense of safety and promote their increasing emotional resilience and ability to self-regulate their behaviours.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff have made sure that the young people are safe at the school and as well-prepared as they can be for the life outside the school’s gates.

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Inspection Judgements

During the inspection, the standard of young people’s behaviour was very high. All young people were very welcoming, polite, friendly and kind. They have made tremendous progress in terms of their behaviour. Not long ago, their responses to adults were very different and often included swearing, spitting and attacking them.

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Inspection Judgements

The impact and effectiveness of leaders and managers Outstanding

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Inspection Judgements

Under the visionary and highly committed leadership and management, staff members are united in their passionate drive to enable children and young people with disabilities to fully participate in life and achieve fulfilment. The school is a bastion for the rights of disadvantaged children and young people. It firmly advocates for valuing diversity and achieves young people’s effective inclusion and social integration.

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Inspection Judgements

Robust monitoring systems, comprehensive and regularly updated policies and procedures, a wide-ranging training programme and a clear framework of meetings help staff to consistently translate the school’s ethos into effective care practice. The residential provision is efficiently managed and highly successful. Within the school Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 7 of 11 community, it makes a strong contribution to the young people’s outstanding outcomes.

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Inspection Judgements

Staff receive excellent guidance, supervision and management support. A nurse with 40 years of post-qualifying experience provides them with additional support and advice. This could be on any physical and mental health matters that they wish to discuss, regarding themselves or young people that they look after.

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Inspection Judgements

The residential manager and all staff are qualified, experienced, passionate about their work and highly competent in their roles. The school’s learning culture and the team’s stability over many years mean that the staff have been able to build on their professional expertise. The collaborative approach and excellent communication with partner-agencies make further contributions towards the effective team working around each young person.

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Inspection Judgements

Parents and social workers provide exceptionally positive feedback about the impact that the school has had on the young people who use the residential provision. A social worker said that she was ‘completely impressed’. A mother said that her son, ‘has thrived in a loving and caring environment’.

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Inspection Judgements

The school’s robust internal and independent scrutiny effectively underpins its strong improvement culture. One of the current improvement aims is to make the residential practice more evidence-based. Staff have compiled a photographic evidence file for each young person. These files clearly demonstrate the young people’s excellent engagement and progress. Their other files contain a wealth of useful information about them. However, the quality of the record-keeping does not always give justice to the excellent practice. An example of this is that the risk management plans do not fully reflect the review of the practice of using the alarms on bedroom doors at night and the depth of staff’s thinking and discussions that took place in relation to this. The manager and staff are working towards improving the quality of the records further. Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 8 of 11

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What 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 Inspections of boarding and residential provision in schools: the inspection framework.

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What inspection judgements mean

Judgement Description Outstanding A school where the experiences and progress of children and young people consistently exceeds the standard of good and results in sustained progress and achievement. The outcomes achieved by children and young people are outstanding and the impact the boarding/residential provision has had in supporting this progress and achieving these outcomes is clearly evidenced. Good A school providing effective services which exceed minimum requirements. Children and young people are protected and cared for and have their welfare safeguarded and promoted. Requires improvement A school where there are no serious or widespread failures that result in children and young people's welfare not being safeguarded or promoted. However, the overall outcomes, experiences and progress of children and young people are not yet good. Inadequate A school where there are serious and/or widespread failures that mean

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What inspection judgements mean

children and young people are not protected or their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded or if their care and experiences are poor and they are not making progress. Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 9 of 11

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School details

Unique reference number 102466 Social care unique reference number SC027138 DfE registration number 312/7006 This inspection was carried out under the Children Act 1989, as amended by the Care Standards Act 2000, having regard to the national minimum standards for residential special schools. Type of school Residential Special School Number of boarders on roll 18 Gender of boarders Mixed Age range of boarders 14 to 17 Headteacher Sister Julie Rose Date of previous boarding inspection 09/03/2015 Telephone number 01895 258507 Email address julie.rose@pieldheathschool.org.uk Inspection Report Pield Heath School, 14/10/2015 Page 10 of 11 guidance 'raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted', which is available from Ofsted's website: www.gov.uk/ofsted." If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk

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School details

You can use Parent View to give Ofsted your opinion on your child's school. Ofsted will use the information parents and carers provide when deciding which schools to inspect and when and as part of the inspection.

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School details

You can also use Parent View to find out what other parents and carers think about schools in England. You can visit www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk or look for the link on the main Ofsted website: www.gov.uk/ofsted

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School details

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 Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work-based learning and skills training, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children's services, and inspects services for looked after children, safeguarding and child protection. Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the Education Act 2005, the school must provide a copy of this report free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied. if you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please

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School details

telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk. You may copy all or parts of this document for non-commercial educational purposes, as long as you give details of the source and date of publication and do not alter the information in any way. To receive regular email alerts about new publications, including survey reports and school inspection reports, please visit our website and go to 'Subscribe'.

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School details

T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.gov.co.uk/ofsted

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