Children's home run by Pathway Care Solutions Ltd in Bolton

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:

 There is an overall lack of tracking, evaluation and forward planning. The young person’s progress is apparent through the reduced number of incidents of aggressive behaviour and through placement stability. The staff have not evaluated this progress, or looked at progress in other areas. The staff do not fully understand what is working well.  There is a lack of progress in education. Staff have not advocated on the young person’s behalf to bring about improvements. The young person’s engagement in education to date has been superficial.  Staff do not have sufficient information about the young person placed in their care. Records relating to the young person’s health needs, their background and their care plan are incomplete or absent. While there have been a number of requests made for this information, the matter has not been escalated by staff in a timely manner.  Staff do not have information about the young person’s family and accept

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The children's home provision requires improvement because:

that the young person does not have contact with any family members. A situation of active avoidance of conversations about contact exists, due to this lack of information and concern that such conversations may have a negative impact on behaviour. This is despite the young person being assessed as ‘clearly emotionally troubled by this lack of relationship’, and there being risk of aggression towards care staff as a result.  Poor record-keeping, conflicting risk assessments, and inconsistencies in the manager’s review of incidents, undermine the positive work on managing the young person’s behaviour.  Staff support is insufficient; they do not receive regular supervision and have not been offered all the relevant training opportunities. A number of staff do not hold the required qualification.

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The children's home strengths

 The staff team provides a stable placement, where the young person feels at home.  Staff manage challenging behaviour effectively and without the use of physical intervention. This positive behaviour management has contributed to placement stability and a reduction in incidents of aggressive behaviour towards staff, and in the community.  Staff understand how to report any safeguarding concerns. No allegations or referrals have been made.

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Statutory requirements

This section sets out the actions that must be taken so that the registered persons meet 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 persons must comply within the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

6: The quality and purpose of care standard In order to meet the quality and purpose of care standard, the registered person is required to (2)(b) ensure that staff (iv) provide personalised care that meets each child's needs, as recorded in the child's relevant plans, taking account of the child's background; (ix) make decisions about the day-to-day arrangements for each child, in accordance with the child's relevant plans, which give the child an appropriate degree of freedom and choice. This relates to ensuring that all relevant placement and care plans are in place and that staff can provide consistent care to meet the child's identified needs. 1 August 2016

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Requirement Due date

8: The education standard In order to meet the education standard, the registered person must ensure that (1) children make measurable progress towards achieving their educational potential and are helped to do so; (2)(a) staff (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. 5 September

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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 1 August 2016 (2)(a) that staff (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; (ii) help each child to understand how to keep safe; (b) that the home's day-to-day care is arranged and delivered so as to keep each child safe and to protect each child effectively from harm. This is in relation to ensuring that all records regarding the child's safety, including risk assessments, missing from home policies and protocols are consistent and up to date, and that staff practice in relation to help and protection is supported by consistent management overview and evaluation.

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Requirement Due date

13: The leadership and management standard In order to meet the leadership and management standard, the registered person must (1) enable, inspire and a lead a culture in relation to the children's home that (a) helps children aspire to their full potential. (2) In particular, the standard requires the registered person to (c) ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child; (f) understand the impact that the quality of care provided in the home is having on the progress and experiences of each child and use this understanding to inform the development of the quality of care provided in the home; (h) use monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. This is with reference, specifically, to having systems in place to demonstrate progress, which are easily accessible and tell the child's story, and to improving the home's development plan.

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Requirement Due date

14: The care planning standard In order to meet the care planning standard, the registered person must ensure that 1 August 2016 (2)(c) each child's relevant plans are followed.

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Requirement Due date

The registered person may only employ an individual to work in the children’s home who has the appropriate experience, qualification and skills for the work that the individual has to perform. An individual who works in the home in a care role has the appropriate qualification if, by the relevant date, the individual has attained the level 3 diploma for residential childcare (England) or a qualification which the registered person considers to be equivalent to the Level 3 Diploma. (Regulation 32(4)(a)(b)) 31/08/2016

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Recommendations

To improve the quality and standards of care further the service should take account of the following recommendations:

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Recommendations

 Residential childcare should be ambitious, nurturing children's school learning and out-of-school learning and their ambitions for the future. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 6, paragraph 1.10)

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Recommendations

 Measurements of educational progress should include qualitative information and quantitative data where available. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 26, paragraph 5.2)

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Recommendations

 The staffing structure should be included in the statement of purpose. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.10)

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Recommendations

 It is essential that a child's plans should form the basis of their care. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 56, paragraph 11.1)

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Recommendations

 Case records must be kept up to date, signed, and dated by the author of each entry. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.3)

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Information about this children's home

This home is registered to care for one young person with emotional and behavioural difficulties. It is owned and managed by a private organisation.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

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Recent inspection history

17 February 2015 Interim Improved effectiveness

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Requires improvement

This home has recently reregistered as a one-person home. Since reregistration, one young person has resided here. There is a lack of monitoring and evaluation of the young person’s experience and progress. Energy has gone into providing placement stability, and reducing the number of aggressive incidents towards care staff and in the community. This has been a success, but a lack of tracking and evaluation means that not all staff can see that there has been progress, which is demotivating. There is insufficient understanding of why the young person’s aggression has reduced, creating anxiety about managing any future incidents. Systems to monitor and review progress are not embedded so do not support the staff team or, more importantly, the young person to see what progress has been achieved from the start. Educational progress has not been measured, and it is difficult to ascertain whether the current educational package is meeting the young person’s needs.

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Requires improvement

Staff have been passive in their roles, and have not advocated on the young person’s behalf. There are low expectations regarding the young person’s motivation to learn, and anxiety about pursuing plans that are more ambitious. The young person is starting to build trusting, positive relationships with staff. This is a newly formed, but committed staff team. Staff frequently manage challenging behaviour and episodes of aggression. Despite these difficulties, the young person enjoys spending time with staff, and can be demanding of their attention. Staff engage in a number of recreational activities to motivate and support the young person. Staff are also insightful about the young person’s need to make and maintain positive peer relationships, and they provide opportunities to facilitate this. Staff have some understanding of the young person’s complex needs. However, they have not been provided with sufficient information in relation to health, the

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Requires improvement

family history or the care plan from the placing authority. The young person moved to the home some months ago, but this crucial information remains outstanding. A number of requests for information have been made, but staff have not escalated this in a timely manner. This has hindered the staff’s ability to meet all the young person’s complex needs. Information regarding the young person’s family and contact arrangements is very poor, resulting in staff actively avoiding discussions about family or contact. Staff recognise that better information may help them identify triggers for negative behaviour. There may also be scope for contact to be facilitated, or at least for work to be undertaken with the young person about his identity and a social story built around this. Information available to the staff from medical professionals strongly suggests a correlation between the lack of contact and presenting

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Requires improvement

aggressive behaviour, but this information has not fed in to a strategic plan to address the emotional need or to manage aggressive behaviour. The young person has a voice in the home and is able to make representations. Key-work sessions enable the young person to develop age-appropriate self-care skills, but there is no coherent plan to address the young person’s social and emotional needs as he moves into adulthood.

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Requires improvement

The young person’s behaviour has improved since he has lived here. There has been a significant decrease in violent incidents in both frequency and intensity, as well as a reduction in his offending in the community. Although some aggressive behaviour continues in the home, staff have not used any form of physical intervention and the young person continues to make progress in his behaviour. Staff struggle to identify why this is, although senior leaders highlight the role modelling by staff as having a positive influence. These improvements are undermined by poor record-keeping, conflicting and out-of-date risk assessment information, and inconsistencies in the manager’s overview and evaluation of incidents. This results in staff lacking clarity about how to keep the young person safe and he, in turn, lacks an understanding of how to keep himself safe. Incident records of negative behaviour lack clarity as to the triggers behind a

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Requires improvement

behaviour and the action that staff take in response. The manager reviews and evaluates each incident, but some of his observations of good staff practice are in direct conflict with the response detailed in the behaviour support plan. This is misleading for staff. Staff often do not sign to say that they have read the complete review of incidents and, as a result, it is not clear what they have learned from an incident. Risk assessments lack clarity, are out of date and conflict with other documents, and this leads to inconsistencies in staff practice. For example, staff do not share a common understanding of whether the young person’s use of the internet is to be monitored or not. Incidents of going missing from the home have reduced, although precise numbers are not clear. Not all records have been completed and staff lack an understanding of what constitutes a missing incident and the process to follow. They work from

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Requires improvement

an out-of-date protocol established with the local safeguarding board and the risk assessment refers to a time when the young person was on electronic tag. When staff have recorded a missing from home incident, there has been no return interview carried out. This means that staff are unable to learn effectively from such incidents, which hinders their ability to keep the young person safe. The premises are well maintained, and regular health and fire checks ensure that the building is safe. Regular fire drills ensure that the staff and young person are aware of safe evacuation procedures. Staff understand how to refer any safeguarding concerns and are aware of the designated safeguarding personnel. No allegations or referrals have been made. Staff training in safeguarding is thorough, and a course on understanding radicalisation has been identified for staff to complete in July 2016. Staff have yet to complete training in the area of sexual exploitation. Currently, this is not an

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Requires improvement

issue for the young person but training in this area would broaden the knowledge of the staff team. Robust recruitment processes ensure that suitable personnel are employed to work in this home. When there are known issues, such as previous convictions, these are explored in interview and thoroughly risk assessed. Not all this information is currently stored in the home, which means that records are not easily accessible.

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Requires improvement

This inspection highlights a number of shortfalls in the monitoring processes, record keeping, and support systems for staff and identifies a lack of direction and purpose of the service. While the inspection took place during a period of absence of the registered manager, several of these shortfalls predate his absence and risk becoming entrenched. The manager has been in post for several years and is currently working towards his diploma level 5 award in leadership and management. He manages this home and another home nearby. In his absence, staff were unable to describe sufficiently the monitoring systems and subsequently were unsure about the progress that the young person has made since coming to the home. Progress reports prepared on a regular basis provide some description of what has happened but lack sufficient evaluation and do not indicate his starting point or provide robust evidence of progress made. An independent person visits the home

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Requires improvement

monthly to carry out monitoring. Any actions identified are addressed promptly. Until recently, the young person and his social worker had not provided consent for his files to be viewed, which hampered scrutiny of the care provided. Several of the shortfalls identified during this inspection have not been picked up during these visits. The manager’s review of care report was provided during the inspection. This quarterly review reflects on the work carried out, but the report contains several inaccuracies and inconsistencies, for example in the number of missing from home incidents. The quality of recording in the home is generally quite poor. Records contain inaccurate or incomplete information, and various documents often provide conflicting information. Complaint records have not been fully completed and do not show the outcome of the complaint, although staff are confident that the matter has been dealt with to the satisfaction of the complainant. In the manager’s

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Requires improvement

absence, some records are not easily accessible, for example, supervision records are locked away, and the deputy was initially unable to retrieve this information during the inspection. The overall lack of managerial oversight of essential documentation for the home, whether that be risk information, care plans, monitoring reports or incident records, means that there is little understanding of the impact that the quality of care provided in the home is having on the progress and experiences of the young person. This, in turn, means there is limited understanding of how to improve the care or outcomes for the young person. This is reflected in a weak development plan that lacks clarity about the direction and aims of the service. A core team of permanent staff acts as good role models for the young person. Staff members have varying experience and skills but a number of them do not have the required level of qualification, and several have not yet been enrolled on

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Requires improvement

the course. Irregular supervision means that staff are not sufficiently supported in their roles; the deputy, in post since March of this year, has had one supervision. In addition, staff have little or no training on understanding the specific needs of the young person. As a result, staff do not receive support to help them to meet the complex and varied needs of the young person. The staffing structure is not reflected in the home’s statement of purpose and therefore this document provides misleading information to stakeholders. Staff engage with a number of other professionals, for example the mental health team, but when services are not forthcoming or information is not provided, there is a lack of escalation and appropriate challenge. This presents as a lack of ambition and low aspirations for the young person, and he does not always receive the wider support that he should.

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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 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 that 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 whom 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

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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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