Children's home in Stratford-on-Avon

Good

The children's home provides effective services that meet the requirements for good.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 Staff plan well for young people’s transitions into the home. Staff are intuitive and quick to understand the individual needs of young people in order to provide personalised care.  One young person currently lives at the home and the staff have done everything possible to make the house the young person’s home.  Staff are nurturing, warm and take every opportunity to praise the young person’s success and achievement.  Staff are creative in supporting the young person to develop strategies to become more emotionally resilient and to reduce the likelihood of them self- harming.  Staff support the young person to engage in education and continue to make academic progress.  Staff and the manager receive support, training and guidance from the clinical therapy team to ensure that they are able to meet the emotional health needs of the young person.  The manager understands the strengths of the home well.

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The children's home provision is good because:

 The manager uses monitoring systems effectively to ensure that the young person receives tailored support.  The registered manager is swift to challenge partner agencies to ensure that care planning, contact and safeguarding issues are proactively managed.

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Information about this children's home

The home provides care for up to three young people with emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The home is privately owned and forms part of a large social care company.

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Recent inspection history

Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement 24/03/2016 Interim Improved effectiveness 26/08/2015 Full Good 24/03/2015 Interim Sustained effectiveness 26/06/2014 Full Good

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Good

One young person currently lives at the home. The staff team worked hard to ensure that the young person’s transition into the home was well planned, reducing any anxieties to enable her to quickly settle. For example, prior to the young person’s admission she was able to visit the home and staff went to meet her at her existing placement. This provided the opportunity for staff and the young person to get to know each other. Staff took advantage of this, finding out what her favourite colour was so that on arrival her bedroom was painted pink, making her feel welcome and at ease. To promote the young person’s sense of belonging further, staff have encouraged her to redecorate a bathroom and put up pictures of herself. The proactive efforts of staff have ensured that the young person has a sense of identity and belonging.

p.5

Good

Staff provide the young person with good-quality personalised care. Staff have worked hard to develop relationships with the young person. Staff have achieved this by showing that they care, being intuitive about when to give the young person hugs and recognising when she needs to talk and when she needs some time on her own. This sensitive, caring approach has enabled trusting relationships to be forged.

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Good

Staff understand that the young person feels more at ease with female staff and accommodate this wherever possible. Equally, staff recognise the value in the young person having positive male role models in her life, and the allocation of a male key worker has been an effective way to promote this. The young person is able to identify several staff who she feels able to trust. This has enabled her to talk about health issues, discuss her feelings and anxieties and to seek support when she has felt low in mood.

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Good

Staff have worked hard to develop the young person’s self-esteem, confidence and self-worth. For example, staff have supported the young person to engage in a range of activities within the community and to develop friendships with other young people. For example, the young person has recently taken part in a cheerleading competition, coming second in her category, which was a fantastic achievement that has been celebrated and acknowledged by staff.

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Good

Staff are alert to the young person’s health needs and recognise the link between her physical and emotional health, and the need for a holistic approach to support. Staff have coordinated intervention from primary and specialist health providers such as the opticians, dentist, general practitioner and clinical therapy team to address her health needs. This has enabled the young person to feel well cared for so that her health needs are met.

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Good

Staff have worked in conjunction with the placing authority to ensure that the young person accesses full-time education. The self-motivated young person has needed limited support to enable engagement. Consequently, the young person is making good academic progress and is on track to be reintegrated back into mainstream education.

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Good

Staff recognise the importance of family contact and the need to safeguard. The value that staff place on contact has meant that contact has been a positive experience, while still having the necessary safeguards in place.

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Good

Staff ensure that a range of risk assessments are kept up to date in order to promote a consistent approach to managing risk. Staff understand risk well and actively review how effective strategies are in keeping the young person safe. This knowledge is used to inform key work sessions and therapeutic interventions, as well as how to respond to crisis situations. A social worker told the inspector, ‘Their recent handling of the safeguarding incident tells you all you need to know. They were excellent.’ Effective risk management by staff means that the young person is becoming increasingly safe.

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Good

Staff recognise and understand the young person’s vulnerability to potential exploitation both online and within the community. Staff have taken the necessary steps to keep the young person safe, putting in restrictions for free time, access to the internet and use of mobile phones. Equally, staff are listening to the young person’s request for increased freedom and in consultation with the young person are exploring ways to remove these restrictions safely. For example, staff have recently agreed that the young person can go to the local shops on her own. If successful, the length of time she will be allowed on her own will be increased. In conjunction with this, key work sessions to increase the young person’s insight and ability to keep herself safe are being completed. Staff are supporting the young person to develop the knowledge and skills to make better decisions about keeping herself safe.

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Good

Staff benefit from regular communication, advice and support from a clinical therapist who has assessed the young person and understands her individual needs. This means that staff have a good awareness of the young person’s emotional health needs and how to help her. Staff have been creative in supporting the young person to develop her emotional resilience, encouraging her to use stress balls and a feelings chart to manage her emotions. Staff recognise that night-times can be a difficult time for the young person, and use simple but thoughtful ways to help the young person to relax and manage. For example, staff will provide her with a hot water bottle, turning down her bedsheets, choosing a nice movie to watch or having a bedtime cup of tea. The staff team’s insight and proactive approach has shown signs of early success with self-harming deceasing.

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Good

The strength of relationships with staff has meant that for the majority of her time in placement, the young person has not felt the need to go missing, which is significant progress when compared with her previous placement. Staff are alert to the signs that the young person maybe considering going missing and do their best to ascertain what has prompted these feelings, using this information to suggest alternative ways of dealing with the problem, offering reassurance and where possible using distracting techniques. When this has been unsuccessful and the young person has gone missing, the follow up action by staff has been swift. Furthermore, following the last incident, the registered manager met with the police to revisit their missing from home protocol. As a result, there is now a much clearer multi-agency understanding of what steps to take in the event of the young person going missing, reducing the potential risk of harm to the young person.

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Good

The manager ensures that appropriate recruitment and vetting processes are in place. This reduces the possibility of young people being harmed by those in positions of trust.

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Good

The experienced and knowledgeable registered manager has been in post since May 2016, formally becoming the registered manager in November 2016. The registered manager has completed the level 4 national vocational qualification in leadership and management for care services. Staff have all completed the level 3 diploma in residential childcare or equivalent.

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Good

The registered manager is passionate in his approach. He understands the strengths of the home and is keen to develop these further. For example, the staff team’s use of research and regular consultation with the clinical team is supporting the development of evidenced-based therapeutic practice in line with the statement of purpose.

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Good

The registered manager recognises the importance of the young person having well-supported and trained staff. Staff receive good-quality and regular supervision, and consequently work safely and consistently together. From the point of induction onwards, staff receive a good level of training, in safeguarding, child protection and health and safety.

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Good

The registered manager is working hard to develop and maintain effective working relationships with partner agencies. When barriers to collaboration present themselves, the registered manager is persistent in his approach, escalating concerns and using his relationships with partners to ensure that the young person receives the support and intervention that is required.

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Good

The registered manager ensures that the physical environment of the home is maintained to a high standard. The property looks and feels like a family home. Currently, this is enhanced due to the young person insisting that the staff decorate the home for Christmas, not satisfied with the existing three Christmas trees she is petitioning for a fourth tree which she has requested must be pink. The young person lives in a pleasant, safe and homely environment, providing her with a sense of belonging.

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What the inspection judgements mean

The experiences and progress of children and young people are at the centre of the inspection. Inspectors will use their professional judgement to determine the weight and significance of their findings in this respect. The judgements included in the report are made against ‘Inspection of children's homes: framework for inspection’.

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What the inspection judgements mean

An outstanding children's home provides highly effective services that contribute to significantly improved outcomes for children and young people who need help and protection and care. Their progress exceeds expectations and is sustained over time. A good children's home provides effective services that help, protect and care for children and young people and have their welfare safeguarded and promoted. In a children's home that requires improvement , there are no widespread or serious failures that create or leave children being harmed or at risk of harm. The welfare of looked after children is safeguarded and promoted. Minimum requirements are in place, however, the children's home is not yet delivering good protection, help and care for children and young people. A children's home that is inadequate is providing services where there are widespread or serious failures that create or leave children and young people being

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What the inspection judgements mean

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

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Information about this inspection

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

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Information about this inspection

Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and 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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