Children's home run by Hampshire County Council in Winchester

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:

 Children experience an extremely caring, nurturing and compassionate environment while living in this home.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff have an exceptional understanding of each child, and are highly attuned to their emotional, psychological and physical needs.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Children make excellent improvements in their personal care skills, social skills, behaviour and confidence.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff provide warm, trusting relationships with children and they feel safe.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff and managers have excellent working relationships with colleagues in other agencies.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Children’s views are actively sought and are highly valued by staff.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff provide exceptional support to enable a positive and successful transition into or out of the home.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff are skilled in understanding each child’s vulnerabilities and work proactively to reduce individual risks.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff take their responsibility to safeguard extremely seriously, and use their excellent safeguarding knowledge and their understanding of the child to protect them from the risk of abuse.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff have an excellent knowledge of children’s behaviour and the reasons why they are behaving in a particular way. Staff use consistent boundaries, and focus on praising and rewarding positive behaviour.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 The management team has high aspirations for the children who they care for, and this ethos flows throughout the staff team.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff are competent, and have an excellent awareness and understanding of the child and their needs to provide high-quality care.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 The staff team is extremely motivated, and is dedicated to providing excellent care and support to children to enable them to reach their potential.

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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 ‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’. The registered person(s) must comply within the given timescales.

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Recommendations

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

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Recommendations

 The registered person must ensure that when children are not in school they are supported to sustain their confidence in education and be engaged in suitable structured activities of at least 25 hour per week of good-quality registered alternative provision (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, April 2015, page 28, paragraph 5.15).

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Recommendations

 The registered person must ensure that records of restraint are kept, and enable the registered person and staff to review the use of control, discipline and restraint to identify effective practice, and to respond promptly where any issues or trends of concern emerge. This includes ensuring that the reason for the use of a restraint is clear and explicit (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 49, paragraph 9.59).

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Recommendations

 The registered person must gain consent to any monitoring or surveillance by the placing authority, in writing, at the time of placement. This refers to obtaining consent specific to the use of monitoring devices (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards, page 16, paragraph 3.16).

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Recommendations

 The registered person has specific responsibilities under regulation 34 to prepare and implement policies setting out the arrangements for the safeguarding of children from abuse or neglect, and clear procedures for referring child protection concerns to the placing authority. The registered person should ensure that all areas required by regulation 34 are clear and explicit within the home's local policies (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 44, paragraph 9.19).

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Recommendations

 The registered person should review the appropriateness and suitability of the location and premises of the home at least once a year. The review should include the identification of any risks and opportunities presented by the home's location and strategies for managing these. This includes the risks presented by local amenities (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 64, paragraph 15.1).

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Recommendations

 The registered person must ensure that staff play a key role in supporting children in line with their personal education plan. Staff must be aware of children’s current abilities and expected achievement in order to support children to reach their academic potential (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 26, paragraph 5.3).

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Recommendations

 The registered person should evidence how staff help each child to prepare to live independently, including practical skills such as cooking, housework, budgeting and personal self-care. Staff must also ensure that all work carried out with children to develop their skills is underpinned by a written plan (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 17 paragraph 3.27).

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Recommendations

 The registered person must ensure that a review of the statement of purpose takes place to ensure that it advises children on how they will be informed of the outcome of a complaint, and who to contact if they feel their rights are not being promoted (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 15, paragraph 3.6).

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Recommendations

 The registered person should actively seek independent scrutiny of the home, including obtaining feedback on the experiences of children, in order to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided, as outlined in regulation 13 of the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 51, paragraph 10.24).

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Information about this children's home

This home is owned and managed by a local authority. The home provides care and accommodation for a maximum of four children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

9 December 2015 Interim Declined in effectiveness

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Good

Children experience an extremely caring, nurturing and compassionate environment while living in this home. Staff have an exceptional understanding of each child, and are highly attuned to their emotional, psychological and physical needs. Staff use this knowledge to provide skilful and sensitive care. This forms a secure foundation to support children to grow and develop. As result, children make excellent improvements in their personal care skills, social skills, behaviour and confidence. A child’s social worker commented that he could not ‘speak more highly of the staff’ and advised that their care and support of a child had ‘transformed’ their life for the better.

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Good

Staff have warm, trusting relationships with children, so they feel safe. As a result, children become more confident and their self-esteem improves. A child who previously would not leave her home now feels able to go out with staff, and to visit family and friends. Another child has benefited from the strong and consistent boundaries put in place by staff, which have enabled him to develop his personal care skills and have directly improved his health. He has also developed his social skills, feels more able to participate in conversations and is making friends, which previously he had not been able to do.

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Good

Children’s emotional and psychological well-being is promoted to a high standard, and is addressed in a holistic fashion that includes direct access to therapy from an external educational psychologist. Consequently, children are developing tolerance and concern for others, and will seek out staff to reflect on previous experiences. The home’s emphasis on children’s emotional health is enabling them to gain a more positive self-view and develop stronger emotional resilience. This has resulted in improvements in their confidence, behaviour and interactions with others.

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Good

Not all children are in full-time education or employment. Those that are have made significant improvements in their attendance and are developing educationally, such as improving by two points scales in literacy, numeracy and reading. However, one child is refusing to engage in education or employment, despite staff’s continuous encouragement and guidance. This means that they do not benefit fully from the opportunities made available to them. Children do have personal education plans. However, some information such as the child’s educational goals and academic levels is missing. This information is yet to be established by the home. Therefore, staff are unaware of how they can best support each child to reach their academic potential, or measure how well each child is progressing academically and if they are reaching their expected levels.

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Good

Staff and managers have excellent working relationships with colleagues in other agencies. These relationships are reinforced through the home’s ‘pillars of parenting’ approach, which involves a monthly meeting attended by all the professionals involved in the child’s care. These meetings provide a forum jointly to discuss and monitor each child’s development, and to devise collaborative strategies to ensure that the child receives consistent support.

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Good

The ethos of the home is extremely child-centred. Children’s views are actively sought and are highly valued by staff. Children play an active part in residents’ meetings and are able to share their views through regular key-worker sessions. Children are routinely and effectively involved in the running of the service. Children have been involved in reviewing the children’s handbook, as well as in setting the expectations of the home and designing posters to display this information. This helps children to develop an awareness that their views are important and are respected, building on their self-esteem and self-confidence.

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Good

Children have opportunities to try new things, go to new places and develop new talents. This provides them with a sense of achievement, and widens and enriches their social experiences. They are also encouraged and supported to maximise their ability to do things for themselves, for example carrying out personal care, tidying their bedrooms and assisting with meal preparation. For those young people who are approaching independence, staff provide guidance on budgeting and obtaining employment. However, young people’s pathways plans contain limited detail on how staff are expected to prepare them for independence. This is not supported by a clear plan from the home to show what support the staff are providing or by evidence demonstrating what children are currently able to do. This could lead to children not having the necessary skills for adulthood, or to a poorly planned or unsuccessful transition into independence.

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Good

Staff understand the importance of contact with family members. They provide excellent support for children to maintain contact with them, where this is appropriate. Families are made welcome when visiting the home, and this has eased anxieties and enabled the visits to be positive. As a result, children have been able to improve relationships, and to maintain a sense of belonging and identity within their families.

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Good

Staff provide exceptional support, and work effectively with external colleagues to enable a positive and successful transition into or out of the home. Staff have ‘gone above and beyond’ in supporting a child who had previously left the home. Staff continued to provide guidance and support for this child, providing consistency at a time of high anxiety, helping them to feel valued, and boosting their confidence and self-esteem. On another occasion, staff assisted foster carers of a child who was due to move to the home. This excellent piece of practice avoided a further placement breakdown for the child and prevented them from feeling further rejection. This enabled a positive ending to take place, and a successful transition into the home. Two children have left the home since the previous inspection. This was due to an escalation in incidents of aggression, violence and bullying behaviour. Although

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Good

staff had identified some patterns in the children’s behaviour, their strategies had not been successful in reducing the children’s aggressive and violent outbursts. The manager took action to escalate these concerns to senior managers and worked closely with the placing authority to find the children alternative placements. As a result, one child moved to live with a family member, which was a positive outcome for them. The managers and staff have reflected on this experience and, as part of their learning, they have implemented the use of a comprehensive tool for matching. This considers the home’s ability to meet prospective children’s needs and whether the new referral would be suitably placed with the existing resident group. This will ensure that future placements are appropriate, sustainable and will not have a detrimental effect on children already living in the home.

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Good

Staff are skilled in understanding each child’s vulnerabilities, and work proactively to reduce individual risks. Children have individual and comprehensive risk assessments, and this identifies strategies so that staff can care for them in the best way. Each child’s risk assessment is regularly updated and shared appropriately, including with the child. Children say that they feel safe in the home, and all identified a staff member whom they would go to if they were worried or upset. Staff take their responsibility to safeguard extremely seriously. They use their excellent safeguarding knowledge and their understanding of the child to protect them from the risk of abuse. Although the procedures to be followed when a safeguarding concern are outlined in the organisation’s policy, the home’s local safeguarding procedures do not cover concerns such as radicalisation, female genital mutilation or self-harm. Neither do they provide details of the procedures

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Good

that should be followed when there is a concern. This may cause staff to become confused and the proper procedure not followed, which may compromise the safety of the child. Incidents of children going missing from the service have been significantly reduced. When an incident occurs, staff respond quickly and appropriately to establish the child’s whereabouts, and to liaise with police and local authorities to ensure that the child returns home safely. At the home’s previous inspection, it was found that some children subjected their peers to bullying on a regular basis. This resulted in some children feeling unsafe and not wanting to remain in the home. Managers have taken action to intervene and to ensure that no further incidents of bullying occur. They have reflected on the learning from these incidents, and children now report feeling safe and settled within the home. Staff have an excellent knowledge of children’s behaviour and the reasons why

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Good

they are behaving in a particular way. Staff use consistent boundaries, and focus on praising and rewarding positive behaviour. They also use a variety of different strategies to help children to talk about their feelings and to express their emotions. This has been successful in supporting children to recognise their feelings, and to express them safely and positively. All members of staff are trained in the method of physical intervention used by the organisation. However, staff are recording physical interventions twice, leading to confusion between entries and missing information. At least two entries do not evidence that the behaviour of the child has met the threshold for physical intervention. Neither is it always clear what the records mean when they state that the child was ‘highly emotional’ or ‘exhibited behaviours that required staff’s intervention’ as reasons why a physical intervention was necessary. Some records of interventions have not been critically

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Good

evaluated for their effectiveness by someone who is independent of the intervention. This compromises the manager’s ability to monitor the use of physical interventions, and does not help staff to improve their practice. The home uses electronic monitoring during the night to ensure that staff are able to respond promptly to the needs of the children. Although the service’s statement of purpose details the use of night-time surveillance, permission has not been sought for the use of electronic surveillance, as required by regulation. The registered manager is now aware of this and is taking action to ensure that permission is obtained. Children live in a light, homely and relaxed environment. They are able to individualise parts of the home, as well as their bedrooms, to reflect their personalities. This gives them a sense of identity and belonging in the home. Managers carry out regular health and safety audits to identify potential hazards

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Good

and to reduce any risks. The home’s location review considers the majority of risks presented by the local area. However, in places, the review states the local amenities yet not the risks that these present, nor how the associated risks can be reduced.

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Outstanding

The registered manager holds both a degree in social work and a level 4 qualification in management. She is extremely experienced and has worked as a manager within residential care for over 13 years. The registered manager and her deputy meet daily. This ensures that there is an extremely cohesive and dedicated partnership in place. As a result, the management team shares effectively its knowledge and responsibilities to lead an excellent culture of promoting positive outcomes for children. The management team has high aspirations for the children whom they care for. This ethos flows throughout the staff team. Staff members are extremely skilled and, along with managers, know the children whom they support extremely well. They know what is best for them, and are driven and determined to provide individualised care that is of a high standard. All staff have completed an appropriate qualification within the required timescales. This qualification, along

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Outstanding

with the home’s training programme, ensures that staff are competent, and have an excellent understanding of the child and their needs in order to provide high- quality care. There is a very stable staff team in place. This provides a predictable environment, which helps to reduce children’s anxieties and has a positive impact on behaviour. Staff are committed to providing an improving service that delivers individualised support to children within a safe and nurturing environment. Staff are involved effectively in the development of the service and are consulted on where improvements can be made. Managers provide staff with regular formal, informal and group supervision. This provides them with the opportunity to reflect on their own practice, the progress that children are making and where positive changes can be made. Managers and staff value partnership working. They communicate effectively with each other and outside professionals, resulting in excellent working relationships.

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Outstanding

Managers and staff work proactively with other professionals. They advocate and challenge effectively on the child’s behalf to ensure that there is a strong, consistent approach to promoting the child’s safety. This also enables staff to make positive developments in all aspects of their lives. The registered manager’s monitoring of the home is of a high standard and evaluates the progress that children make. This enables the manager to make positive improvements to their plan of care and to the quality of the service provided. The home’s development plan is comprehensive, and demonstrates that the managers have an excellent oversight of the service and are aware of where improvements need to be made, including areas identified within this report. Currently, the manager does not consult or obtain feedback on the quality of the service provided. This means that children’s families and professionals are not

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Outstanding

actively involved in defining or measuring the quality of the service, or able to contribute to the future planning of the home. The home’s statement of purpose clearly sets out the ethos and objectives of the home. It ensures that those using the service, working in the service or linked to the service are clear about what it does and are able to have a shared understanding. However, the home’s current statement of purpose does not advise how children will be informed of the outcome of their complaint or whom they can contact if they feel that their rights are not being promoted. The home has undergone huge structural change in the past year and the staff team has moved to a temporary building while the previous site is being renovated. Although these changes have put additional pressure on staff, this has not affected the high-quality care provided. This demonstrates the commitment of the staff, who are extremely motivated, and are dedicated to providing excellent

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Outstanding

care and support to enable children to reach their potential.

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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 ‘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 0300 123 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, work- based 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

Interested in our work? You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter for more information and updates: http://eepurl.com/iTrDn .

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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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