Children's home run by Keys Active 8 Care Limited in Rossendale

Inadequate

There are serious and/or widespread failures that mean children and young people are not protected or their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 Safeguarding procedures fail to protect young people from harm.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 Behaviour management strategies including the use of sanctions are inconsistent and fail to address unacceptable behaviour. Young people do not, therefore, benefit from clear behaviour management strategies.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 Responses to young people who are missing from home are inconsistent and do not evidence the measures that the home takes to secure a young person’s return, or how it aims to reduce such risk-taking behaviours.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 Risk management is poor. Assessments are routinely updated, but staff do not sign to say that they have seen and understood the risk-taking behaviours of young people.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 There is little progress in the attendance and attainment of all young people in education. The requirement made at the last two inspections to address this remains unmet.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 The home is not working in line with the key aims of the updated statement of purpose. The stated aim of ‘our aim is to create a warm and caring environment’ is not being met.

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The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 The home does not have a full staff complement. This results in staff from other homes and agency staff frequently covering shifts at the home. Consequently, young people experience inconsistencies in their day-to-day lives, and fail to develop trusting and stable relationships with staff.

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The children's home strengths

 The organisation has appointed a new manager, who has demonstrated some progress in the home in the few weeks she has been in post.

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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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Requirement Due date

5. Engaging with the wider system to ensure children's needs are met:

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the engaging with the wider system standard, with particular reference to ensuring placement plans meet a child's needs and ensuring that independent return interviews take place after each episode of missing from home occurs, the registered person must ensure that staff—

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Requirement Due date

(c) if the registered person considers, or staff consider, a placing authority's or a relevant person's performance or response to be inadequate in relation to their role, challenge the placing authority or the relevant person to seek to ensure that each child's needs are met in accordance with the child's relevant plans; 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

8. The education standard In order to meet the education standard, to enable children to make measurable progress towards achieving their educational potential, the registered person must ensure that staff— (2)(x) help each child to attend education and training in accordance with the expectations in the child’s relevant plans; 30 June 2016 10: The health and well-being standard

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the health and well-being standard, with particular reference to attending the doctor, dentist, optician and specialist services, the registered person must ensure that staff enable 10 (1)(b) children receive advice, services and support in relation to their health and well-being; 10 (1)(c) children are helped to lead healthy lifestyles. 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

12. The protection of children standard In order to meet the protection of children standard, to enable children to be protected from harm the registered person must ensure— 12(b) that the home’s day-to-day care is arranged and delivered through effective care planning and risk management so as to keep each child safe and to protect each child effectively from harm; 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

12. The protection of children standard In order to meet the protection of children standard, the registered person must ensure staff — (a)(iii) have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of harm;

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, through regular monitoring and review, and

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Requirement Due date

(vi) take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare;

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, with regard to risk management (Regulation 12(2)(a)(iii)(vi)). 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

13: The leadership and management standard

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Requirement Due date

13(2)(a) lead and manage the home in a way that is consistent with the approach and ethos, and deliverers the outcomes, set out in the home’s statement of purpose; 30 June 2016 13: The leadership and management standard

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Requirement Due date

(d) ensures that the home has sufficient staff to provide care for young people; (e) that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care; (Regulation 13(2)(d)(e). 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

Fire precautions After consultation with the fire and rescue authority, the registered person must(a) take adequate precautions against the risk of fire; (d) ensure, by means of fire drills and practices at suitable intervals, that persons working at the home and, so far as reasonably practicable, children are aware of the procedure to be followed in case of fire (Regulation 25(1))(a)(d)). 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

Fitness of workers Ensure the individual has the appropriate experience, qualification and skills for the work that the individual is to perform;

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Requirement Due date

With particular regard to agency staff (Regulation 32(3)(b)). 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

Children’s case records Ensure that case records, including risk assessments and care plans, are kept up-to-date and signed and dated by the author of each entry (Regulation 36(1)(b)(c)). 30 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

Notification of a serious event Ensure that HMCI is notified if a child is involved in or subject to or is suspected of being involved in or subject to sexual exploitation, where there is an allegation against the home or persons working there, an incident requiring police involvement which is considered serious or there is another incident relating to a young person which the manager considers to be serious (Regulation 40(3)(a) (4)(a)(b)(c)). 30 June 2016

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further the service should take account of the following recommendation(s):  Ensure that children are in full-time education whilst they are of compulsory school age, unless their personal education plan contained within the care plan or other relevant plan states otherwise. The home must aim to support full time attendance unless the child's relevant plan indicates this is not in their best interests (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 28, paragraph 5.14).

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Recommendations

 Staff should continually and actively assess the risks to each child and the arrangements in place to protect them. Where there are safeguarding concerns for a child, their placement plan, agreed between the home and their placing authority, must include details of the steps the home will take to manage any assessed risks on a day to day basis (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 42, paragraph 9.5).

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Recommendations

 The use of agency or bank staff should be carefully monitored and reviewed. Rapid turnover of staff, whether agency or directly employed, is likely to indicate underlying problems and should be monitored and addressed by the registered person (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 45 paragraph 10.12).

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Information about this children's home

The home is registered to accommodate up to four children of mixed gender, aged 10 to 17 years old. The home specialises in the care of children who present with emotional and behavioural problems. It is operated by a private organisation.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

14 January 2016 Full Requires improvement

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Recent inspection history

28 January 2015 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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Inadequate

At the last full inspection in January 2016, the registered manager had resigned and the home was judged to require improvement. This inspection assessed the care of children and young people to be inadequate, because of the significant shortfalls in safeguarding.

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Inadequate

There are inconsistencies within the staff team due to the regular use of agency and sessional workers who regularly cover shifts in the home. Consequently, young people fail to make strong and trusting relationships with staff, which impacts on their emotional resilience and ability to form positive attachments. Two young people attend school, but their attendance is very poor. One young person has one-to-one tutoring in the home. His attendance has increased from around two hours a week to around four hours a week since the last inspection. The tutor explained that the young person ‘doesn’t put pen to paper’ but that they have lots of discussions about current affairs and he helps her complete Sudoku puzzles. Since his admission in February 2016, another young person is yet to start in education. The manager and the placing authority had identified some schools, but either the school has refused to offer a place or the young person has refused

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Inadequate

to attend. A meeting has been arranged by the social worker to try to address this shortfall. In the meantime, the young person does not wish to engage with worksheets that care staff present to him. As a result, education outcomes are suffering because of young people’s poor attendance. One young person is engaged in employment. This is a stable learning environment and, as a result, he is achieving in his chosen career.

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Inadequate

The management of behaviour by staff is inconsistent. Young people have an individual behaviour management plan and staff are provided with specific guidance on individual methods of managing behaviour. However, staff are not consistently following this guidance and, as a result, young people’s behaviour continues to be very challenging. This is reflected in the incident log and daily observation sheets that include fire setting in the home, serious assaults on staff and criminal damage. This inconsistent approach fails to enable young people to understand their own behaviour in order to address it and make essential changes beneficial to their future. The manager and staff have been encouraging young people to attend health appointments and make appointments with specialist health professionals, but young people continue to refuse to engage. All young people smoke and there appears to have been little effort by staff to discourage this. There are also

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Inadequate

concerns that some young people have taken drugs while in the home, as cannabis has been found in the ‘chill out’ room.

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Inadequate

Young people have the opportunity to participate in a range of activities and clubs, but often refuse to engage with staff suggestions, preferring to socialise with their peers in the local community. These periods of free time can last up to three hours away from the home. It is positive that young people have the freedom to make and sustain friendships outside of the care setting, but it is unclear what the young people are doing as they are generally unsupervised during these periods.

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Inadequate

Care planning arrangements are good. Young people who are placed have a residential care plan, a behaviour management plan and a healthcare plan. Plans are routinely updated, and changes including long-term arrangements and revised risk analysis are completed. Similarly, young people routinely benefit from planned on-to-one sessions to address the aims of the placement, behaviours or areas for concern. Consequently, there is a clear structure to assist young people to make changes in their lives and to help them to achieve their placement objectives. Pathway plans are in place, and this goes some way to guiding staff in their work with young people. One young person has been supported to work on the bronze level of their independence programme. As they are due to leave care within the next year, these skills are vital to ensure that they are ready to support themselves.

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Inadequate

Young people are supported to keep in appropriate contact with their families. Some of the young people live a long way from home and there are serious risks for them back in their home areas. As a result, contact is generally carefully planned and supervised closely. Judgement grade

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Inadequate

Young people have not been adequately safeguarded. Although some of the young people are clearly engaging in less risky behaviour than they had previously, there are still a number of shortfalls that are not acceptable. In several instances risks have not been well identified by staff.

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Inadequate

The home is not settled and young people could not confirm that they felt safe. One young person, during an incident at the home said that he felt unsafe and called the police when another young person became volatile and challenging.

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Inadequate

There have been a number of safeguarding concerns prior to the inspection which have not been thoroughly investigated by managers. Following his visit in April 2016, the Regulation 44 visitor reported, ‘In my opinion, the children at the home are not safeguarded due to the fire lighting incidents.’ This, together with a number of new concerns that have come to light during this inspection, means that the cause for concern has increased.

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Inadequate

Systems for managing investigations are deficient. For example, when an allegation has been made by a young person it is not possible to track the investigation and the outcome of such incidents from records. Records do not provide details of the investigation or how the outcome was fed back to the young people or staff within the home.

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Inadequate

Risk assessments have been put in place to enable staff to understand how to support the young people they care for. These are regularly updated by the manager. However, the risk assessments are not being followed by staff. They are not always signed as being read and understood by either regular or agency staff, and this fails to keep young people and staff protected. Recently, a young person went missing in very similar circumstances to an event last year. On that occasion the local authority had given clear instructions to the home as to how this risk was to be managed. However, the staff at the home did not follow the requests made of them, and the whereabouts of the young person was unknown. As a result, this exposed the young person to high risk of being exploited.

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Inadequate

Consistency of practice between the staff team is weak at times. For example, a negative consequence was imposed upon a young person, which resulted in no lifts for social reasons for seven days as a result of stealing the car keys and starting up the vehicle. However, during this period the young person was picked up in the community by car following his free time. This demonstrates that the management of behaviour at the home is sometimes inconsistent and, as a result, young people receive mixed messages.

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Inadequate

Staff supervision of the young people in the home has been poor. Children from the community have been able to enter the home and a bedroom of a young person. Staff found the children hiding under the bed of the young person. This is a very serious breach of security at the home and placed all the residents at risk of harm or being exploited. Young people have been able to bring drugs into the house and steal the house vehicle car keys from the office. Staff have failed to implement consistently the clear boundaries put in place by the manager to address this.

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Inadequate

The number of incidents of missing from home has recently increased. Return interviews after ‘missing’ episodes have not always been held. This does not provide the home with up-to-date information about where young people go and why they leave the home. This information is important in understanding why young people go missing and in developing strategies to reduce the incidences further.

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Inadequate

A recent admission into the home has brought about an increase of incidents involving fire. While the individual did have a comprehensive fire-lighting risk assessment in place, the home’s fire risk assessment had not been updated since October 2015. Furthermore, the home had struggled to involve young people in fire drills, and clear records of fire drills were not being completed. This fails to put comprehensive plans in place to manage fire safety in the home.

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Inadequate

A number of agency staff have been employed in the home since the last inspection. Profiles of agency staff which show the qualification, experience and whether they have been suitably checked by the agency should be held within the home. Some profiles were not available and it is unclear how, without having sight of this crucial information, the permanent staff in the home have ensured that young people have been safeguarded. This fails to keep young people safe from harm. Judgement grade

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Requires improvement

The registered manager resigned in December 2015. Since this time, a manager was recruited to the home in February 2016, and applied to Ofsted to become the registered manager. All relevant checks are now complete. The applicant is new to the role of manager but has experience of being a deputy manager, and has her national vocational qualification level 3.

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Requires improvement

There has been some positive progress in areas such as decoration of the home and record keeping, although there continue to be serious shortfalls in behaviour management. At the previous inspection three requirements and a recommendation were made. The requirement and recommendation to enable children to make measurable progress towards achieving their educational potential has not been met. The manager has ensured that the requirement around meeting the health needs of young people by providing specialist advice and support has been actioned. However, young people continue to refuse to engage with these services, so their health and emotional well-being is not improving, therefore the requirement remains unmet. Likewise, the third requirement, around the home being lead and managed in a way that is consistent with the aims and ethos of the statement of purpose, has not been met.

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Requires improvement

Notifications required in accordance with regulations are not consistently forwarded to Ofsted for review, for example a young person setting fire to a waste bin in the home before carrying it out to a public phone box. This means that the regulatory body cannot review the actions taken by the home to maintain the ongoing safety of young people placed there. The home has a clear statement of purpose which is regularly reviewed to ensure that full and accurate information is available to parents and placing authorities. The home provides each young person with an informative guide which details the service offered, with telephone numbers for young people to contact for support and advice. This ensures that young people are clear about the care and service provided.

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Requires improvement

Young people are cared for by staff who bring a variety of skills and experience to the service. They receive regular supervision and benefit from a range of training opportunities that equip them to fulfil their role. The staff rota shows the deployment of sufficient staffing, although on occasion shortfalls have occurred on night shifts and agency staff have had to be used.

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Requires improvement

The registered provider has appointed an independent Regulation 44 visitor who undertakes regular visits to the home and reports on their findings. This means that the quality of care and welfare of young people is adequately monitored. Reports are sent to Ofsted in a timely manner and reflect accurately the current situation in the home. Consequently, the regulator has the opportunity to assess how well the home is responding to issues that may be identified to improve the service.

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Requires improvement

The management team promotes and embraces feedback, including issues arising from independent and internal monitoring processes. However, new ideas and emerging practice are not yet embedded throughout the managerial and staffing culture.

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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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