Children's Home run by Horizon Care Limited in Staffordshire

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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The children's home provision requires improvement because:

 Children and young people are not making good progress with their behaviour difficulties and emotional problems.  Some children and young people are not getting the right support to overcome difficulties in establishing good eating, sleeping and educational routines.  Children and young people are unsure about their future plans and why they are placed here.  Staff do not help children and young people to see their records as a ‘living documents’ in ways that will help them now and in the future.  Staff and children are not receiving the psychological support from in-house clinicians or child and adolescent mental health services that are described in the home’s statement of purpose.  Staff manage children and young people behaviour differently, causing inconsistency that in some instances makes difficult situations worse. This can include locking doors.  The manager does not lead the staff team sufficiently to secure a consistent

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The children's home provision requires improvement because:

and skilful approach to behaviour management and safeguarding.  The manager’s reviews and monitoring of the home do not lead him to identify weaknesses and inconsistencies in staff’s practice.  The home does not keep clear records of the actions taken and the outcome of all child protection enquiries.  Some serious incidents of allegations, significant damage and hurt to children, young people and staff, are not notified to Ofsted.

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The children's home strengths

 Some staff are warm, nurturing and skilful. They have strong attachments to children and young people. They know and use behaviour management strategies that help soothe and develop children and young people. Children and young people rarely display risky behaviour when these staff are working.  Most staff focus on restorative approaches to incidents of damage, harm and bullying.  Social workers and education professionals are complimentary about the way that the home works and the communication and resilience of staff.  Children, young people and staff like the manager and find him supportive.

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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 within 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 regard to consistent behaviour management and positive relationships, the registered person must—

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Requirement Due date

(2)(b) ensure that staff work as a team where appropriate. 20 June 2016

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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, the registered person must, with particular reference to ensuring that children's psychological needs are addressed through the provisions named in the statement of purpose—

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Requirement Due date

(2)(a) lead and manage the home in a way that is consistent with the approach and ethos, and delivers the outcomes, set out in the home's statement of purpose. 20 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must prepare and implement a policy which provides for records to be kept of an allegation of abuse or neglect, and the action taken in response (Regulation 34 (2)(d)). 20 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must notify HMCI and each other relevant person without delay if an incident requiring police involvement occurs in relation to a child which the registered person considers to be serious; a child protection enquiry involving a child is instigated or concludes (in which case, the notification must include the outcome of the child protection enquiry); or there is any other incident relating to a child which the registered person considers to be serious (Regulation 40 (4)(b)(d)(e)). 20 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The system for monitoring, reviewing and evaluating the quality of care must provide for ascertaining and considering the opinions of children, their parents, placing authorities and staff 20 June 2016 (Regulation 45 (5)).

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the care planning standard, children must receive well-planned care from the home and have a positive experience of admission and transition processes. In particular, the standard requires the registered person to ensure—

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Requirement Due date

(2)(b) that arrangements are in place to—

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Requirement Due date

(iii) plan for, and help, each child to prepare to leave the home or to move into adult care in a way that is consistent with arrangements agreed with the child’s placing authority. 20 June 2016

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further, the service should take account of the following recommendations:  Ensure that the home fosters positive relationships, encouraging strong bonds between children and staff in the home on the basis of jointly undertaken activities, shared daily life, domestic and non-domestic routines and established boundaries of acceptable behaviour ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 6, paragraph 1.10).

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Recommendations

 Ensure that just as in a family home, children should be able to access all shared areas of their home unless there are specific reasons why this would not meet a child's needs. Any decisions to limit a child's access to any area of the home and any modifications to the environment of the home, must only be made where this is intended to safeguard the child's welfare. All decisions should be informed by a rigorous assessment of that individual child's needs, be properly recorded and be kept under regular review ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 15, paragraph 3.10).

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Recommendations

 Ensure that staff have the capacity and competence to build constructive, warm relationships with children that actively promote positive behaviour and provide the foundations for managing any negative behaviour. Staff should have the skills to respond to each child's individual behaviour. Where necessary they should manage conflict, maintain constructive dialogues and react appropriately if challenged by a child in their care ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 39, paragraph 8.14).  Ensure that the local authority regularly consults the child and the home about the child's relevant plans. If the child raises concerns about the content of any of their plans, their implementation or the process of review, staff should advocate for the child and seek to ensure that their concerns are addressed ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 57, paragraph

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Recommendations

 Ensure that staff encourage children to see the home's records as 'living documents' supporting them to view and contribute regularly to the record in a way that reflects their voice ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 58, paragraph 11.19).

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Recommendations

 Develop staff skills for safeguarding so that they are able to identify signs that children may be at risk, and can support children in strategies to manage and reduce any risks. Staff should encourage children to express their views about whether they feel safe both within and outside the home. Staff should support children to understand how to ask for help to stay safe and that the home is an environment which supports this ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 43, paragraph 9.10).

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Recommendations

 Ensure that the registered person uses their professional judgement to decide which factors to focus their care quality reviews upon. The review should enable the registered person to identify areas of strength and possible weakness in the home's care, which will be captured in the written report. The report should clearly identify any actions required for the next six 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 ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 65, paragraph 15.4).

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Information about this children's home

The home is registered to provide care for three children and young people with emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The home forms part of a large social care company.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

30 March 2016 Interim Improved effectiveness

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Recent inspection history

10 November 2015 Full Requires improvement

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Recent inspection history

30 March 2015 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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Requires improvement

Children and young people are not clear about why they are here and what they are aiming for. They arrive at short notice following family or foster care breakdown. Their uncertainty holds back their progress and their emotional health. This level of uncertainty has resulted in one young person running away back to her family. Another young person was moved to secure accommodation and the organisation has served notice on another young person.

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Requires improvement

Some staff are nurturing and kind to children and young people, but cannot answer their questions about how long they will be here or what things they need to do. Some staff talk to children and young people about how to be the best that they can be and how to take responsibility for their behaviour so that they stand the best chance of going home or getting a foster family. However, the manager, staff and social workers are not working together effectively enough to provide children and young people with clear plans and the answers that they need.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people receive better quality individualised care from some staff members than others. There is a lack of good teamwork. Some staff do not successfully help children and young people to establish good routines of eating healthy regular meals, getting up in time for school being active and purposeful with their free time and getting a good night’s sleep. Children and young people say that some staff are aggravating and unfair.

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Requires improvement

Some staff have low expectations of what they will achieve with children and young people during a shift. For example, some staff do not plan with the manager and other staff how they will encourage young people to get out of bed. This means that young people, who are being tutored temporarily at home because of severe issues in school, are not engaging in schoolwork or in the life of the home. Visiting tutors’ time is wasted and young people do not take part in any other meaningful activity or learning with staff. In contrast, children are in good educational routines. Staff transport them to the same school that they have attended for some years. School staff say, ‘The home staff are lovely. We liaise well and they come in and talk. They take on our strategies.’ Nevertheless, education partners are very concerned about children’s deteriorating emotional and mental health and the lack of psychological support. The manager, staff and social

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Requires improvement

workers are not working together quickly enough to ensure that both children and young people living away from their home authorities get this support. In addition, staff, children and young people are not getting the in-house clinical advice that is described in the home’s statement of purpose. Children’s and young people’s progress towards managing their own conflicts and difficult feelings is slow. This is because their relationships with staff vary in quality and the response of staff to their behaviour also varies. Staff expectations about daily routines and their responses to difficult behaviour are not always consistent and appropriate. For example, some staff routinely lock the internal doors to the kitchen and lounge when it is bedtime and when children and young people are damaging things. Other staff do not do this because children and young people say that they feel aggravated, disrespected and scared by this practice. Children and

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Requires improvement

young people also report that some staff help and support them with good levels of understanding about how their past experiences and present concerns affect their behaviour. Children and young people progress more and engage quite well when these staff are looking after them.

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Requires improvement

The manager and staff group’s understanding of children’s and young people’s views requires improvement. Children’s questions about their future are not addressed in a coordinated way and their plans are not communicated to them simply and with understandable goals. They do not read their records and rarely have their own copy of anything. Children’s and young people’s responses to significant conversations are not well known by all staff because their responses are rarely written down. Staff and the manager do not know what children and young people are learning from key working sessions because they do not revisit the session with them or write down their views about the sessions. Records about children and young people are therefore of little help to them or to the staff team. This means that the staff group are badly informed about what children and young people need next or how best to provide that in a coordinated way during their

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Requires improvement

shift. Despite this, stakeholders say ‘we acknowledge their obvious commitment to our child’ and ‘they reward and praise, but he is a very troubled child’.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people respond well to some staff and enjoy spending time at football club, going for local walks and runs or playing outside. Children particularly enjoyed a recent few days away with staff at a holiday park. Children like to read or watch a film with staff to settle them before going to sleep. Young people find a shared interest in animal care with some staff and get good advice, support and information about relationships, sexual health and dental health from other staff. Young people are helped to meet up with friends that they know through school. They have received some good advice about how to protect themselves from unsafe situations while developing some independence.

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Requires improvement

There are too many incidents of bullying, hurt to staff and damage to property. Staff are not consistently delivering good help that enables children and young people to live together happily and make good individual progress. Some staff plan well and build on their positive relationships to ensure that children and young people are safe, well occupied and respectful to one another. Other members of staff are ineffective and their responses worsen situations to a point that police intervention is needed. Young people say that locking internal doors, locking away the phone and asking the police to talk to them makes them feel more angry and frustrated.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people are not unnecessarily criminalised, but there is too little teamwork where staff and the manager review and share best practice for behaviour management. Risk assessments and behaviour management plans only explain in general terms how children’s and young people’s behaviour risks should be managed. These plans are not adapted in the light of what children and young people say or what individual staff find that works. This means that the staff group do not have clear guidance on what to say, what to do, what works well and what to avoid.

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Requires improvement

The use of rewards and sanctions is inconsistent. The system to record rewards and consequences is hardly ever used. Weekly reward chart planners have been half-heartedly used for a few weeks, but did not seem to result in a child getting a reward. Staff and the manager do not look at their records to see what rewards or consequences have worked well or less well. Children and young people do not have copies of their rewards records or their behaviour plans or incentive charts. Therefore, these tools do not help children and young people. They also do nothing to promote consistent practice. As a result, the staff group have little drive or coordination to proactively tackle children’s and young people’s behaviour. Mistakes and inconsistencies, such as sanctioning a child’s football club for a week, therefore still occur.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people sometimes choose rewards to reinforce their achievements and good behaviour. For example, a young person chose some new headphones as a reward for being mature and seeking advice that he needed. Staff bought him a punch bag to use to get out some of his frustration and anger. Some staff have identified strategies to help children and young people to calm. For example, one member of staff takes a child to go and skim stones at a local ford. A young person likes to go for a fast walk around the lanes with certain members of staff. All children and young people are enjoying a new local trampolining activity centre as an active and fun treat.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people are not now going missing from the home or from contact or free time. Frequent incidents of going missing that affected all the children and young people during March have ceased since one young person ran away from the home and refused to return. Young people are working well with a free time programme and are keeping safe by answering welfare calls from staff and staying together with their known friends. However, staff and the manager have not talked to the friends’ parents or carers or encouraged friends to come to the home. These are actions that a good parent would take in order to be sure young people are safeguarded.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people rarely complain about the staff or make allegations, but the system for recording these is not consistently applied. For example, an allegation was made by a young person who recently lived here. The allegation was referred, via the placing authority, to the local authority designated officer. Adequate support was given to the young person concerned and no further action was taken. However, the home’s manager did not keep a record of the allegation, the action taken and the outcome. This means that there is no record for the staff and manager to review and learn from.

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Requires improvement

The registered manager’s impact on the quality and consistency of staff practice requires improvement. He has been in post for about three years and holds the level 5 diploma for leadership in residential care. He is receptive to support and advice. He acts on the recommendations and regulatory requirements made by Ofsted. However, he is not proactive enough in leading the staff team or advocating for children and young people with their local authorities. As a result, staff provide a variable quality of care and children and young people are unsure about their plans.

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Requires improvement

Children and young people say that the manager listens to them. He demonstrates a good understanding of the impact of their past experiences on their present behaviour. The manager respects them and is kind to them. Children and young people like him. Staff like him. However, the manager spends most of his time on administrative tasks in the office. The organisation of records in the home is much better than at the last full inspection and staff can find things. The statement of purpose up to date in terms of the staffing arrangements, but it promises a level of clinical psychological support that has not yet been provided to the children, young people and staff since the end of 2015.

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Requires improvement

The manager’s review and analysis of the practice in the home requires improvement in order to be effective. His reviews of the home take a long time but do not delve critically or analytically into the home’s records to root out inconsistency and lack of clarity. For example, the manager has not identified issues with inconsistent behaviour management practice and safeguarding practice by going to the records and seeing the inconsistencies there. He has not examined records for patterns and trends in practice among individual staff. The manager has not identified the fact that a member of staff may not complete his qualification within two years of starting work. He has not tried to work out if the rota or staff meetings and supervisions might need changing to address consistency issues. Similarly, the manager has not noticed from scrutinising records that weaknesses exist in hearing and acting on children’s and young people’s

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Requires improvement

The manager does not consult closely enough with children, young people, stakeholders and families, keep records of what they say or bring forward messages for action from the information that he obtains. The manager is not quick or skilful enough at challenging the whole team around each child and young person to work effectively so that each one gets the help and answers that they need. This means that children and young people do not yet consistently receive good quality care or make good progress.

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Requires improvement

The manager overlooks reporting and recording systems that are designed to ensure the home’s practices are transparent to Ofsted. For example, in April 2016 he did not notify a child protection allegation and a number of serious, harmful, damaging and bullying incidents. This means serious events or how staff are handling them are not known by the regulator. This hinders Ofsted’s role as a critical friend.

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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 that 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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