Children's home run by Hexagon Care Services Limited in Preston

There are serious and widespread failures that mean young people are

not protected or their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded.

p.2

The children's home provision is inadequate because:

 Staff do not have the skills to recognise that young people are involved in behaviour that is placing them at risk of harm when they are allowed to spend time unsupervised in each other’s bedrooms. Staff do not take effective action to manage bedtimes and sleeping arrangements, allowing young people to stay in each other’s bedroom overnight, including when the young people have alcohol in their possession.  Staff do not take robust action to remove young people from bedrooms in which they have barricaded themselves together. Staff do not ensure that when they find young people sleeping in bedrooms together in the morning that they wake them and ensure that they return to their own bedrooms.  Leaders are aware of these issues and fail to recognise them as safeguarding issues or take any action to prevent this practice.  The registered manager uses electronic door monitoring in the home without the placing authorities’ written consent. The use of electronic monitoring

p.3

The children's home provision is inadequate because:

does not alert staff that young people are in each other’s bedrooms, as it is on the landing door. This does not safeguard young people.  The registered manager does not ensure that young people benefit from effectively planned care, as new admissions to the home disrupt the care of the existing group. Young people who are newly admitted to the home experience short placements, as staff are unable to meet their needs, and the registered manager quickly serves notice on their placements.  Staff recognise that young people are bullying other young people in the home. However, there is no evidence of the staff taking action to engage the young people involved in understanding that this is unacceptable. Staff do not ensure that young people who are at risk of being bullied are always supervised. They do not ensure that a young person can secure their bedroom door after it has been damaged by others.  Staff fail to ensure that young people who are not attending education are

p.3

The children's home provision is inadequate because:

receiving educational training or support until they return to school. They do not provide a structured environment during the day which promotes their education and learning. This does not promote young people’s understanding of the importance of education for their future or prepare them to return to a learning environment.  The registered manager does not ensure that the independent visitor consults young people’s parents as part of the monthly review of the quality of care. She does not ensure that young people’s case records are kept securely once young people have left the home.

p.3

The children's home strengths

 Young people find the staff approachable and easy to talk to, even about difficult issues.  Staff understand about risks to young people outside of the home. They respond proactively to young people’s missing behaviour and ensure that they maintain contact with them and look for them. Staff work with young people’s relatives and the police to ensure that they are located and returned to the home as quickly as possible.  Staff work in partnership with specialist services to reduce the risk of child sexual exploitation in the community.  Staff promote young people’s contact with their families when that is safe and in their best interests. This maintains their sense of identity.

p.4

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.

p.5

Requirement Due date

*12: The protection of children standard

p.5

Requirement Due date

The protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe. In order to meet the protection of children standard, the registered provider must ensure that staff— (2)(a)(iii) have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of harm; and (vi) take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare. 09/12/2016

p.5

Requirement Due date

The protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe. In order to meet the protection of children standard, the registered provider must ensure that: (2)(a)(iv) manage relationships between children to prevent them from harming each other. 09/12/2016

p.5

Requirement Due date

13: The leadership and management standard

p.5

Requirement Due date

(1) The leadership and management standard is that the registered person enables, inspires and leads a culture in relation to the children’s home that– (a) helps children aspire to fulfil their potential; and (b) promotes their welfare.

p.5

Requirement Due date

In order to meet the leadership and management standard, the registered person must ensure the registered person: (2)(h) uses monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. 09/12/2016

p.5

Requirement Due date

In order to ensure the care planning standard is met the registered provider must ensure: 09/12/2016 (1)(a) children receive effectively planned care in or through the children’s home; and (b) have a positive experience of arriving at or moving on from the home. 11: The positive relationships standard

p.5

Requirement Due date

(1) The positive relationship standard is that children are helped to develop, and to benefit from, relationships based on— (a) mutual respect and trust; (b) an understanding of acceptable behaviour; and (c) positive responses to other children and adults.

p.6

Requirement Due date

In order to meet the positive relationship standard, the registered provider must ensure that staff: (2)(a)(xii) understand and communicate to children that bullying is unacceptable. 09/12/2016

p.6

Requirement Due date

The education standard is that children make measurable progress towards achieving their educational potential and are helped to do so. (2) In order to meet the education standard, the registered provider must ensure that staff: (viii) help a child who is excluded from school, or who is of compulsory school age but not attending school, to access educational and training support throughout the period of exclusion or non-attendance and to return to school as soon as possible. 09/12/2016

p.6

Requirement Due date

The registered person may only use devices for the monitoring or surveillance of children if the child’s placing authority consents in writing to the monitoring or surveillance. (Regulation 24(1)(b)) 09/12/2016

p.6

Requirement Due date

The registered person must maintain records for each child which must be kept in a secure place after the child has ceased to be accommodated in the home. (Regulation 36(2)(d)) 09/12/2016

p.6

Requirement Due date

When the independent visitor is carrying out a visit, the registered person must help the independent person to interview in private parents and relatives as the independent visitor requires. (Regulation 44(2)(a)) 09/12/2016

p.6

Recommendations:

Staff should be familiar with the home’s policies on record keeping and understand the importance of careful, objective, and clear recording. (‘Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4)

p.7

Information about this children's home

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

p.8

Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement 08/03/2016 Full Requires improvement 03/09/2015 Interim Sustained effectiveness 13/11/2014 Full Adequate

p.8

Inadequate

Young people’s experiences of living in the home are mixed and progress is inconsistent. Two new young people have been admitted to the home since the last inspection. Both have been short-term placements which have ended prematurely due to staff being unable to meet their needs. The unplanned changes to these placements have negatively impacted on the existing young people. These young people are now disengaging from education, their missing and absent levels are increasing and their routines in going to bed are severely disrupted. Staff lack the skills to recognise when young people are at risk and therefore to take action to keep them safe. The resulting widespread safeguarding failures negatively impact on young people’s experiences.

p.9

Inadequate

Currently, none of the young people are attending education and they are not receiving any educational support while they are not attending school. This mirrors the experience of the young people at the last inspection in March 2016. Staff supported young people to re-engage in education and two young people made considerable progress in attending school. However, they have disengaged and this term their attendance is poor. Staff work with schools and placing authorities to address this and seek to identify new provisions for them. There is currently no time frame for young people to begin to attend school provision. Young people are not making educational progress. Staff do not ensure that there is a structure to young people’s day and do not make use of informal methods of learning. This does not promote the importance of education to young people.

p.9

Inadequate

Young people receive appropriate healthcare. Staff register young people with universal health services and staff encourage them to attend appointments. Most young people’s looked after medicals are completed. The registered manager develops positive relationships with local services that drop in regularly to offer health promotion advice, such as the looked after children’s nurse and Brooke service.

p.9

Inadequate

The registered manager informs young people about accessing an advocate who has visited the home, but currently they have not taken up this opportunity. The registered manager offers them opportunities to engage with her in addition to the support provided through regular young people’s meetings and key-work sessions. The registered manager has revised the young people’s meetings format to ensure that they receive feedback on the actions which staff have taken to meet their requests. This helps young people to understand that staff listen to their wishes and why their wishes cannot always be met. Young people feel able to approach staff and to talk about what is difficult. Young people describe staff as ‘…the best thing altogether here.’

p.9

Inadequate

Staff encourage young people to engage with their interests and hobbies. Young people contribute to the local community, for example by holding a charity coffee morning and meeting local councillors and neighbours. Young people enjoy going to the skate park, swimming, trampolining, baking, fishing and going to the cinema. Staff made good use of their delegated authority to take two of the young people to Wales on holiday over the summer. This offers young people new opportunities to broaden their horizons.

p.10

Inadequate

Staff do not offer help and protection to young people which safeguard their welfare and prevent them being at risk of harm. Staff do not identify and manage risks to support young people to become increasingly safe. Staff do not take effective action to protect young people from being in each other’s bedrooms unsupervised, including overnight. Staff do not follow risk assessments regarding safeguarding young people which clearly state that young people should be supervised. There is a widespread failure in recognising what poses serious risks to young people and a lack of action to protect them.

p.10

Inadequate

Staff do not take actions to prevent young people going into each other’s bedrooms or to ensure that they supervise them if they are in each other’s rooms. Staff go to bed knowing that young people are in each other’s rooms and that they have alcohol which they have refused to hand in. Staff do not maintain boundaries consistently across the team, which does not provide a secure and predictable base for young people. If they find young people in each other’s rooms, they do not take action to remove them in the morning, but continue with their household activities such as cleaning and conducting the staff handover.

p.10

Inadequate

Electronic monitoring is in place on doors leading from the landing. The registered manager has not ensured that she has the placing authority social workers’ written consent to use these. Their purpose is to safeguard young people’s welfare. However, the door alarms do not alert staff to when young people open their bedroom doors, and all the young people’s bedrooms are on the same landing. Consequently, young people are able to enter each other’s rooms at night without staff being aware. Staff do not address this with young people in key-work sessions or revisit boundaries in a formalised way.

p.10

Inadequate

The registered manager has insufficient oversight of staff’s actions in ensuring that risk assessments are followed. As a result, young people continue to sleep in each other’s bedrooms. This presents serious safeguarding risks to young people. Staff recognise bullying. They describe that there is a zero tolerance policy and record bullying in a chronology. However, staff do not complete direct work with young people around bullying or take action to ensure that they always supervise young people in the home. A young person considered at risk of being bullied has had his bedroom door frame badly damaged. The door cannot be secured and staff do not move him into an unoccupied room, despite management directions to do so. This does not promote young people’s safety or sense of security. It was only after the inspector’s intervention during the inspection that staff moved the young person to another bedroom in which he can secure the door.

p.10

Inadequate

Staff have not ensured that they protect young people from harming each other. Two young people complained to the staff about being assaulted by a peer and another young person complained to the police regarding an assault by another young person. This resulted in that young person being charged and receiving a youth offending order. This does not safeguard young people or promote their welfare.

p.11

Inadequate

Staff use physical intervention infrequently. De-escalation techniques have been effective at times. Staff support young people to develop strategies to manage their behaviour. A young person said: ‘Staff have helped me to manage my anger. I have learned to go to my bedroom. This works for me.’ As a result, there has been a decrease in his behaviour involving damage to property.

p.11

Inadequate

Staff understand what to do when young people are missing. They follow agreed protocols and ensure that they contact them and their family and friends. Staff look for young people in familiar places. Staff and managers ensure that they review ‘missing’ behaviour in strategy meetings. Staff understand that the recent increase in missing and absent behaviour is in the context of a change to the home’s dynamics when a new young person joined the group. Staff understand the signs of child sexual exploitation and work with the police and the local team against child sexual exploitation to reduce young people’s risks of child sexual exploitation effectively in the community.

p.11

Inadequate

Staff develop positive relationships with the local police, who work in partnership with staff to address young people’s anti-social behaviour. The local police officer said: ‘As the police, we are always made to feel welcome and there is a constant dialogue between the home and myself.’

p.11

Inadequate

The registered manager does not prioritise the security of group living when she admits new young people to the home. She conducts impact risk assessments which do not place sufficient emphasis on how the high-risk behaviours will impact on the existing group. Both new admissions have occurred without the registered manager meeting the young person. One young person was admitted from police custody from several hundred miles away, and another went missing when he learned that he would be moved and was brought to the home by police when they located him. This does not represent well-planned care or positive experiences of arriving at the home. These two young people left the home as the registered manager served notice when the incompatibility of the group of young people was identified. This was not before this had undermined the progress that other young people were making. For example, one of the new young people’s arrival in the

p.11

Inadequate

home coincided with young people disengaging with education, being missing/absent more and returning later, and returning with alcohol. One new young person had assaulted both young people, leading them to complaining to the registered manager.

p.12

Inadequate

Leadership and management of the home fail to protect young people adequately. The registered manager has been in post since May 2016. She has a wealth of experience as a registered manager. She has been reviewing the processes and tools used to improve the quality of care provided to young people. All but one of the requirements are met from the last inspection, showing that the registered manager learns from the inspection process. However, she has not recognised that staff actions fail to safeguard young people. She is shocked by the staff responses revealed during inspection, which demonstrate significant shortfalls in protecting young people and promoting their welfare, despite staff informing the inspector that this was discussed with her. The independent visitor provides a monthly review of the quality of care provided. However, he does not consult with young people’s family and relatives to ensure that their feedback informs his assessment.

p.12

Inadequate

The registered manager does not securely store young people’s case records when they have left the home, as regulation requires. Staff recording is poor, which is not helpful for young people or anyone else to have a good understanding of their lives, now or in the future.

p.12

Inadequate

The registered manager ensures that the home operates in line with its statement of purpose to provide single-gender provision. However, this is not reflected in the registration of the home. Most of the team is qualified and has many years of experience in the role. Staff receive regular formal supervision. Staff report being well supported by the registered manager.

p.12

Inadequate

Staff work in partnership with schools, the police and child sexual exploitation services to ensure that young people’s plans are implemented effectively. Some young people make progress from their starting points, which is significant. However, this is not always sustained over time. The registered manager recognises this and identifies how the progress that has been made declines when a new young person joins the home.

p.12

Inadequate

Staff and managers develop positive relationships with professional stakeholders and families. This ensures that staff facilitate contact when that is safe and in a young person’s best interests, including those young people who are placed a long way from home. A young person said: ‘The best thing is that staff help me to see my mum.’ This promotes young people’s sense of identity.

p.12

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’. 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

p.14

What the inspection judgements mean

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

p.14

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

p.15

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 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

p.15

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,

p.16

Information about this inspection

The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk .

p.16

Information about this inspection

Interested in our work? You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter for more information and updates: http://eepurl.com/iTrDn .

p.16

Information about this inspection

T: 0300 123 1231 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted

p.16