Children's Home run by Hampshire County Council in Hampshire

The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

children and young people since the most recent full inspection.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

This home was judged outstanding at the full inspection. At this interim inspection, Ofsted judges that it has sustained effectiveness .

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Staff and managers have established excellent relationships with parents, schools and social workers. Staff members work proactively and positively with others to ensure that they obtain as much information as possible on each child and young person who uses the service. Staff use this information effectively to develop comprehensive and highly individualised plans of care and to tailor children’s and young people’s transition into the service to their particular needs. Their transitions into the service can take as long as they need and can begin with short visits with family, teatime visits and stays overnight. This allows children and young people to get to know the service, staff and other children and young people to promote a successful transition. Staff also use these visits to gather further information on individual’s personalities and preferences to ensure that children and young people staying together are matched extremely well. This supports them to develop

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

friendships with their peers building on their self-esteem and ensuring that they have an extremely positive experience at the service.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Children and young people experience exceptional, individualised care during their stay. Staff are highly knowledgeable about each individual and provide extremely skilled care to children and young people with diverse and complex needs. Staff ensure that children and young people are cared for in the way that they prefer. Staff work closely with children’s and young people’s parents, carers and schools to gain an excellent understanding of their routines, such as how they like to be settled at night, how they like their bedding and how they prefer to get dressed. This ensures that children and young people have a relaxing and comfortable stay. Encouraging children and young people to communicate is of the utmost importance to staff. Each child and young person has a comprehensive communication support plan, which informs staff on how each individual prefers to communicate and how staff can best encourage and promote children’s and young

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

people’s ability to communicate. As a result, staff are extremely skilled and adept at supporting children and young people to communicate their wants and needs and in understanding individual cues when they are unable to communicate verbally. Staff and managers are extremely passionate about ensuring that children and young people enjoy their time at the service. They promote children’s and young people’s hobbies and interests to a high standard and are creative and considered in their planning of trips out to ensure that each child and young person has the opportunity to go out to places such to the cinema, theatre and farms. This has supported children and young people to widen and enrich their social experiences, as many of them had not had these opportunities previously. Children and young people are able to develop new skills through the support of the service. Since the previous inspection, staff have worked closely with parents and educational

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

establishments to identify goals that staff, along with parents and education staff, can support children and young people to achieve. This has ensured that children and young people receive a consistent approach and has been extremely successful in supporting them to make significant progress in areas such as their social skills, behaviour and personal care skills. For example, one child who has previously relied on incontinence aids is now able to use the toilet. Other examples include children being able to dress themselves, wash themselves, make their bed and use cutlery at meal times.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Staff have been extremely creative and innovative in ensuring that the environment is stimulating and fun. Staff have painted all areas of the home with well-known film and book characters and have developed resources such as ‘story bags’ to engage and stimulate all children and young people with varying needs in story time. A child who previously did not settle during story time now loves hearing stories such as ‘We are going on a bear hunt’ as she engages and interacts with the sensory items representing parts of the story. Children now have access to a sensory room and garden areas, providing more choice of where and how they would like to spend their time while at the service.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Each child and young person has an individualised behaviour management plan, which outlines his or her safety and supervision needs. These are now reviewed and updated after incidents. Staff have an excellent understanding of children’s and young people’s behaviour. They recognise challenging behaviour as communication and respond to it as such. Staff are extremely skilled at interpreting behaviour and successfully distract or divert children and young people, resulting in no physical interventions since the previous inspection. Staff record all behaviour management interventions to allow managers to evaluate interventions for their effectiveness and to review strategies to ensure that they remain effective. Staff now have opportunity to have a debrief after incidents to reflect on interventions and how staff practice could be improved. Sanctions and the use of ‘time out’ are used in line with each child’s or young person’s behaviour management plan.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

However, recordings are poor in places and do not meet the standard required by regulation. This may mean that staff are not using sanctions appropriately.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Staff take their responsibilities to safeguard extremely seriously and report any concerns appropriately. The service’s local safeguarding procedure has been updated to include the actions that staff must take if they find an unexplained bruise on a child. However, it remains unclear on what action staff should take to ensure the child’s safety after they have made an allegation or disclosure. This could result in staff not taking appropriate action to protect children and young people. The policy also does not refer to safeguarding concerns, such as child sexual exploitation or radicalisation. As a result, a requirement has been made. The service has procedures in place to advise staff of what to do if a child goes missing. However, there have been no incidents of a child being reported missing from this service for a number of years.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

The manager has taken action to address some of the recommendations made at the previous inspection regarding the quality of risk assessments and now ensures that these are reviewed and revised after incidents to ensure that they remain current. The manager has also updated the service’s location risk assessment to ensure that it demonstrates that she has considered the impact on risk of any changes or updates to the assessment. However, a previous recommendation regarding staff employment checks has not been met. This is because a full employment history is not always obtained and the reasons for a staff member leaving their previous employment with vulnerable adults or children have not been verified. This means that the service’s current recruitment procedures do not ensure only ‘safe’ adults work with children and young people. As a result, a requirement has been made.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Monitoring visits by the independent visitor take place within required timescales. However, these vary in quality and often lack assessment of whether children are effectively safeguarded and if the conduct of the home promotes children’s well- being. This is not challenging of the service and does not assist the registered manager in striving to improve and develop the home.

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The effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of

Although two recommendations and two requirements have been made because of this inspection, the deficits identified have not yet impacted on the high quality of care provided to children and young people by this service.

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Information about this children's home

The setting is owned and operated jointly by a local authority children's services department and a National Health Service Foundation Trust. This service offers short breaks for up to nine children and young people who have learning disabilities that may include sensory and physical disabilities, complex health needs or challenging behaviour.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

19/05/2015 Interim Improved effectiveness

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Recent inspection history

21/10/2014 Interim Sustained effectiveness

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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

The registered person may only— (a) employ an individual to work at the children’s home if the individual satisfies the requirements in paragraph (3). (Regulation 32 (2)(a)) 19/07/2016

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Requirement Due date

The procedure to be followed in the event of an allegation of abuse or neglect must, in particular— (e) describe the measures which may be necessary to protect children following an allegation of abuse or neglect. (Regulation 34 (2)(e)) 19/07/2016

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further, the service should take account of the following recommendations:  Records of restraint must be kept and should enable the registered person and staff to review the use of control, discipline and restraint to identify effective practice and respond promptly where any issues or trends of concern emerge, in particular ensuring that records contain all the information required by Regulation 35 of the Children's Homes Regulations 2015 (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, April 2015, page 49, paragraph 9.59).

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Recommendations

 Any individual appointed to carry out visits to the home as an independent person must make a rigorous and impartial assessment of the home's arrangements for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the children in the home's care (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards, April 2015, page 65, paragraph 15.5).

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What the inspection judgements mean

At the interim inspection we make a judgement on whether the home has improved in effectiveness, sustained effectiveness, or declined in effectiveness since the previous full inspection. This is in line with the ‘Inspection of children's homes: framework for inspection’.

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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 focused on the effectiveness of the home and the progress and experiences of children and young people since the most recent full inspection.

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Information about this inspection

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 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

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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