Children's Home, Residential special school run by Acorn Norfolk Limited in Norfolk

Inadequate

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

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The children’s home provision is inadequate because:

 There are serious and widespread failures that leave children at risk of harm.  A lack of consistent staffing and a heavy reliance on agency staff has a negative impact on children. Widespread shortfalls and a lack of strong leadership and management over the past nine months compromise the quality of care. While there is commitment from the staff to meet the children’s needs, this alone is not sufficient to overcome these issues.  Risk assessments do not adequately identify or mitigate the risks that they are intended to address. Individual risk assessments, activity risk assessments, placement matching assessments and the location risk assessment are all of poor quality. Risk assessments and care plans for children are not always updated, either routinely or after significant incidents. Children are more vulnerable as a result.  New staff do not receive the support they need to safely carry out their role.

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The children’s home provision is inadequate because:

Induction processes are not effective in preparing them for their roles and they do not have sufficient supervision and training.  Links with the on-site school are under-developed and staff within the children’s homes lack understanding and insight into the children’s educational experience, progress and attainment. They are not equipped to give children the support they need with their education.  The system of managing medication has not been robust enough.  The home has been without a registered manager for over 26 weeks.  Key documents, such as the statement of purpose and the child protection policy, are out of date, while other records, such as sanction and restraint logs, are of poor quality.  Some parts of the children’s home badly need redecorating.  The entrance gates, vital to keeping children safe and secure, are not consistently in working order. The location risk assessment does not

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The children’s home provision is inadequate because:

robustly identify and mitigate against risks on and around the premises and in the local community.  There is insufficient management oversight of service delivery, the standard of care planning records and staff qualifications. This further undermines the experiences of children in the home.

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Statutory requirements

This section sets out the actions which must be taken so that the registered person 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 must comply with the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

6: The quality and purpose of care standard

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the quality and purpose of care standard, the registered provider must: (2)(c)(i) ensure that the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed and furnished so as to meet the needs of each child. 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the education standard, the registered provider must:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(a)(vi) maintain regular contact with each child’s education and training provider, including engaging with the provider and the placing authority to support the child’s education and training and to maximise the child’s achievement. 12 July 2016

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the protection of children standard, with particular regard to individual risk assessments, the registered provider must ensure that staff:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(a)(i) assess whether each child is at risk of harm, taking into account information in the child’s relevant plans, and, if necessary, make arrangements to reduce the risk of any harm to the child. In particular, ensure risk assessments are thorough, up to date and known to the staff. Ensure that risk assessments are completed prior to placement decisions being made and they consider the potential impact of the arrival of new residents, risk assessing the group living arrangements when any internal house move takes place and that risks associated with e-safety are fully assessed. 7 June 2016 12: The protection of children standard

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the protection of children standard, the registered provider must ensure that:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(d) the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed, furnished and maintained so as to protect each child from avoidable hazards to the child’s health. This is with particular regard to ensuring that the gates to the premises are used to safeguard children effectively. 7 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 provider must:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(c) ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child. 12 July 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, in particular regard to the staff team, the registered provider must:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(d) ensure that the home has sufficient staff to provide care for each child; (2)(e) ensure that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care to each child. 12 July 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 protection of children standard, the registered provider must:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(h) use monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. 12 July 2016

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the care planning standard, with particular regard to ensuring that care plans are updated, the registered provider must:

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Requirement Due date

(2)(b)(ii)) manage and review the placement of each child in the home. 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must keep the statement of purpose under 12 July 2016 review and, where appropriate, revise it. (Regulation 16(3)(a))

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must make arrangements for the handling, recording, safe keeping, safe administration and disposal of medicines received into the children’s home. This is with particular regard to ensuring that in-date medication is available. (Regulation 23 (1)) 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered provider must appoint a person to manage the children’s home if there is no registered manager in respect of the home. (Regulation 27 (1)(a)) 12 July 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that an individual who works in the home in a care role has the appropriate qualification, the level 3 diploma in residential childcare (England) (‘the level 3 diploma’) or a qualification which the registered person considers to be equivalent to the level 3 diploma by the relevant date, which in the case of an individual who was working in a care role in a home on 1st April 2014, is 1st April 2016. (Regulation 32 (3)(b)(4)(a)(b)(5)(b)) 12 July 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that each employee completes an appropriate induction. (Regulation 33 (1)(a)) 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience. (Regulation 33 (4)(b)) 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must keep under review and, as necessary, revise the home’s child protection policies. (Regulation 34 (6)) 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that within 24 hours of the use of a measure of control, discipline or restraint in relation to a child in the home, a record is made which includes all matters set out in regulation 35 (3)(a) and (b). This is with particular regard to the quality of sanction and restraint records. (Regulation 35 (3)(a)(b)) 7 June 2016

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Requirement Due date

In order to complete a quality of care review, the registered person must establish and maintain a system for monitoring, reviewing and evaluating the quality of care provided for children. The system referred to must provide for ascertaining and considering the opinions of children, their parents, placing authorities and staff. (Regulation 45 (2)(5)) 12 July 2016

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must review the appropriateness and suitability of the location of the premises used for the purposes of the children’s home at least once in each calendar year, taking 7 June 2016 into account the requirement in regulation 12(2)(c) (the protection of children standard). When conducting the review, the registered person must consult, and take into account the views of each relevant person. (Regulation 46 (1)(2))

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Information about this children’s home

The children’s home and school is owned by a private organisation and is registered to provide accommodation for 40 children with special educational needs and/or learning disabilities. There is a school on site that is registered with the Department of Education to cater for children and young people aged from 4 to 19 years. Young people live at the home for either 32 or 52 weeks a year. There are currently 22 young people living at the home.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

17 February 2016 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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Recent inspection history

23 September 2015 Full Requires improvement

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Recent inspection history

24 June 2014 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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Inadequate

The home has not had a registered manager since August 2015 and there has been a significant staff turnover. A new manager is now in place but has had limited time to make the necessary improvements. Lack of effective management oversight, high staff turnover and high usage of agency staff have undermined children’s experiences and denied them opportunities to build consistently good relationships with those who care for them.

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Inadequate

Despite the home being on the same site as the school, there is limited association between the two services. Care staff have a narrow understanding of the progress that young people are making. They are not aware of, and therefore cannot reinforce, the messages that children receive at school. For example, staff feel that issues around sexual health are dealt with in school but are unaware of how they are addressed and what they should do to support this aspect of children’s lives. Staff are also unclear about children’s educational attainment and lack knowledge about how they can support their learning. As a result, the service is not supporting children’s educational achievement effectively.

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Inadequate

Some children have made some progress in relation to school attendance and improvements in behaviour. However, too many children are not making progress. Some children’s behaviour has recently deteriorated because of placing decisions made by the service. A social worker said: ‘There have recently been incidents which are to do with the mix of children. This has had an impact on him and he has been easily led.’ This is not good enough; children’s experiences have been compromised.

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Inadequate

There are areas of the children’s home that are badly in need of attention. There is a large hole in the ceiling of one child’s bedroom. There are no lampshades in another building. There are other areas of damage on the site, such as a large boarded-up window in a communal area and a damaged door in one child’s room. While other parts of the grounds and house are better, these issues mean that there are aspects of the site that are not welcoming or homely. They do not convey a message of worth to children or parents.

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Inadequate

There is evidence of some good relationships between children and staff and the children report that they get on well with them. However, they also report that there are not enough staff. Three separate children raised this as a concern. There has been an over-reliance on agency staff arising from a high turnover of permanent staff. Some children reported that agency staff are not always as good as they would like. Parents reinforce this, with one stating: ‘I am less sure about some of the agency staff.’ The staff also report concerns about the staffing levels, with incident reports and physical intervention records reflecting this. The new manager recognises recruitment as a significant vulnerability, and while there are ongoing efforts to recruit new staff, these have yet to come to fruition, and the continuity of staffing remains an issue.

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Inadequate

There is a system for recording medication, but the records are not always clear and reliable. In addition, the system for ordering medication has on occasions not worked. This meant that a child went without controlled medication for a period of days.

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Inadequate

The staff work well with external professionals to support children as they move on from the service. For one child, the staff have developed a good person-centred document to assist his new placement.

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Inadequate

An independent advocate visits the home regularly. The children are aware of routes to raise concerns, and information is available in the houses to support them to do so. The staff assist children to contribute to reviews of their care. For some children this is significant progress. A social worker said: ‘He will attend meetings and advocate on his own behalf. I used to get a standard scripted conversation and now he sits and joins in on an hour long meeting.’

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Inadequate

Risk assessments are poor. They do not adequately anticipate and assess the risks children are likely to experience. For example, a risk assessment relating to the use of the internet does not consider risks associated with online grooming, and it makes unrealistic expectations of children’s behaviour. Staff do not always update risk assessments after significant incidents. For example, staff did not update one risk assessment after an incident in which a child had almost run on to a dual carriageway, despite the management team believing that the update had occurred. Although there is space for staff signatures to indicate that staff have read and understood the risk assessments, staff do not routinely sign them. The staff spoken to had limited understanding of the content of risk assessments. This limits their awareness of risks, potentially making children more vulnerable.

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Inadequate

The staff rota does not currently allow for sufficient non-contact time for staff to read and discuss updates to paperwork, such as risk assessments, at the beginning of their shifts. Risk assessments on the paper file are not always the up-to-date versions that are on the computer. This is despite some staff having no access to the computer at the time of the inspection, and agency staff using the paper records as the source of information about the children. The poor quality of risk assessments raises concerns about the knowledge of staff and the depth of monitoring that has taken place. It does not promote realistic and effective risk management for these vulnerable children.

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Inadequate

The location risk assessment is of little value. The document does not consider recent incidents when children have had unauthorised absences, does not consider the risks of nearby roads, does not refer to risks identified within other documents, and does not include consultation with relevant people. The assessment does not consider the potential hazards posed by the size of the grounds and any impact on monitoring arrangements. It does not consider the potential for difficulties with children with differing needs and abilities sharing communal areas. The risks associated with the location are not adequately assessed and this inaction does not contribute to keeping children safe.

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Inadequate

The home is set within large grounds. The gates to the grounds are crucial to keeping the site safe and secure. They are currently broken. There have been incidents when a child has left the grounds due to the gates being broken. The gates remained broken weeks later, as observed during this inspection. As a result, children are not protected as well as is reasonably practical from a predictable risk.

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Inadequate

The home has not completed risk assessments that consider the potential impact of a child’s placement in the home. The assessments that have been completed focus on the child’s suitability for the school, and have not considered the potential impact on the existing group of children in the home, nor the risks that the child might experience from the current residents. There is also a lack of risk assessment in relation to the group living arrangements for individual houses. Again this means a lack of attention being given to practical measures that could reasonably be taken to avoid potential for harm.

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Inadequate

The home has recently experienced a significant level of difficult behaviours. The staff are keen to promote positive behaviour. Reward charts are in use and observation of interactions saw staff successfully de-escalate situations without the need for punitive interventions. Experienced members of the management team, who children had had to seek out, primarily dealt with these. Debriefs take place with both children and staff, but the records do not consistently capture the follow- up to issues identified. The home uses physical interventions as part of the wider approach to managing behaviour. Records of these and other significant incidents are not good enough. They often lack clarity and precision. Sometimes key information is absent or ambiguous. The monitoring of these records has not been good enough.

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Inadequate

There have been no incidents when children have been considered to be missing from care. However, there have been occasions when children have gone off site without permission. The records in relation to these incidents are not robust enough. In the absence of a clear picture of how children got out of sight and how they returned, an opportunity to improve safeguards for children has been missed.

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Inadequate

The staff were able to articulate what they would do if they had a child protection concern. However, their answers were not confident. Support for staff through induction, supervision and training is not sufficient to ensure confident, effective practice in the home.

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Inadequate

Children feel safe in the home and are able to identify people with whom they could raise concerns. There is regular contact with placing authorities. The new manager is establishing links with the local authority designated officer.

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Inadequate

A new manager, with considerable experience as both a responsible individual and a registered manager, has recently been appointed. She has the experience and qualifications needed to manage a children’s home. She has submitted her application for registration. However, the home has been without a registered manager since August 2015. During this time there have been two managers who have not completed registration and have left the organisation. This has contributed to a lack of stability within the home, with staff reporting different management styles and expectations having an impact on the quality of the service provided. This period of instability is at the heart of many of the issues identified during this inspection.

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Inadequate

One new member of staff described her induction as ‘mayhem’. The induction folder is large and comprehensive, but without the provision of supervision and training, the folder itself is overwhelming. It contains documentation that is out of date. Other staff, who also report ineffective induction, have not accessed safeguarding training despite working with children with complex needs and difficult behaviours. This is a serious omission. New staff and those who have stepped up to new roles have not had the necessary support, guidance and induction to do so successfully, despite being expected to work with children with complex needs and deal with an increase in difficult incidents.

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Inadequate

The home is not providing supervision in line with its own expectations. One member of staff appointed in March had had no supervision at all at the time of the inspection. The service could find no evidence that other recently employed staff have had any supervision, with only one record being located. This lack of support and guidance is of significant concern, with potential to make children more vulnerable. In addition, the manager is not receiving professional, practice- related supervision at this stage.

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Inadequate

Some staff who have been working in the home for longer than two years have not yet attained the level 3 qualification. The majority of staff are now enrolled on this programme, or already have the qualification. There is no training for staff in relation to safeguarding children with a disability, despite the service specialising in this work. This is a very serious omission.

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Inadequate

Internal monitoring has not identified all of the issues picked up at this inspection. The safeguarding policy, which managers distribute to new staff, is out of date. It refers to old versions of key documents. The home’s own review of the quality of care does not include feedback from key stakeholders. It is over-optimistic and promotional rather than evaluative and improvement orientated. There has been no update to the home’s statement of purpose since October 2015, despite considerable staffing changes.

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Inadequate

Children’s care plans do not comprehensively address their needs, nor are they regularly updated. Actions from one child’s review have not been sufficiently addressed. There is no plan from the local authority on file for some children. This does not support staff to provide consistent care, particularly in consideration of the high staff turnover and number of agency staff, who need to access this information.

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Inadequate

The service has called disruption and strategy meetings where they feel they cannot meet children’s needs. On occasion they have given notice, but worked in a child-focused way to enable a planned move.

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Inadequate

Feedback from external professionals was generally positive, with most talking of good communication and effective relationships. However, a social worker noted that staff turnover and changes have had an impact on this: ‘The change of staff has meant that communication has not been as good as it was. The trust needs to be built up again.’ Feedback from parents mirrored this, with one stating: ‘At the start they were giving us regular phone calls. That contact has recently tailed off. This could be to do with staff changes.’

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Inadequate

The new manager recognises the scale of the task ahead. There has been no undue defensiveness from her, and she has identified a number, though not all, of the issues found at this inspection.

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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 children looked after is safeguarded and promoted. Minimum requirements are in place, however, the children’s home is not yet delivering good protection, help and care for children and young people. A children’s home that is inadequate is providing services where there are widespread or serious failures that create or leave children and young people being

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What the inspection judgements mean

harmed or at risk of harm or result in children looked after not having their welfare safeguarded and promoted.

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Information about this inspection

Inspectors have looked closely at the experiences and progress of children and young people living in the children’s home. Inspectors considered the quality of work and the difference adults make to the lives of children and young people. They read case files, watched how professional staff work with children, young people and each other and discussed the effectiveness of help and care given to children and young people. Wherever possible, they talked to children, young people and their families. In addition the inspectors have tried to understand what the children’s home knows about how well it is performing, how well it is doing and what difference it is making for the children and young people who it is trying to help, protect and look after. This inspection was carried out under the Care Standards Act 2000 to assess the effectiveness of the service and to consider how well it complies with the Children’s

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Information about this inspection

Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and the ‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’. the guidance ‘Raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted’, which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted . If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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Information about this inspection

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 children looked after 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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