Children's Home run by Horizon Care Limited in Staffordshire

Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 1 SC062406

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Registered provider: Horizon Care Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

The home is registered to provide care for three children and young people who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The home forms part of a large social care company.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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good

How well children and young people are helped and protected good

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good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers good

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good

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

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good

Date of last inspection: 14 December 2016

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: sustained effectiveness Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 2

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Key findings from this inspection

 Young people make good educational progress.  Staff build warm, lasting relationships with young people.  Young people feel safe and well supported.  Young people’s behaviour improves and they take fewer risks because staff support, advise and care for them well.  Young people are sensitively welcomed into the home.  Young people’s relationships with their families are well supported.  Staff are skilled, confident and proactive about using the home’s preferred therapeutic care practice.  Staff listen to young people’s views, wishes and feelings.  The manager and staff provide social workers, teachers and other professionals with good-quality information.  Staff and the manager take the initiative in resolving young people’s difficulties.  Young people get a warm and well-planned send-off when they move on.  The manager is proactive, diligent, well organised and an excellent role model for staff.

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Key findings from this inspection

 The manager ensures that staff get good support and training for their work with young people.  The manager provides thoughtful oversight of the team’s care practice, and helps staff to see what works best for each young person.

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Key findings from this inspection

The children’s home’s areas for development:

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Key findings from this inspection

 Young people do not get enough opportunities to keep and look at memorabilia and records of their time at the home.  Staff do not keep a clear agenda in their mind of what help each young person needs in order to develop resilience, confidence, maturity and acceptable behaviour.  Staff and the manager do not talk enough with young people about the safeguarding reasons behind decisions that are made. Young people therefore do not understand the restrictions that are placed on them and staff therefore Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 3 cannot assess whether some restrictions are still needed.  The manager does not have notes of her own supervision.  The home’s records do not contain enough information to enable contact with young people’s previous carers.

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

14/12/2016 Interim Sustained effectiveness 17/05/2016 Full Requires improvement 30/03/2016 Interim Improved effectiveness 10/11/2015 Full Requires improvement Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 4

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Statutory requirements

This section sets out the actions that the registered person(s) must take to 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 person(s) must comply within the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

Ensure that the record in the form of a register shows, in respect of each child, the child’s address immediately before being accommodated in the home. (Regulation 37, schedule 4.1(c)) 24/11/2017

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Recommendations

 Ensure that the home’s records on each child represent a significant contribution to their life history. Children and their parents should be supported to understand the nature of records kept by the home and how to access them. Staff should understand their important role in encouraging the child to reflect on and understand their history, according to their age and understanding. Staff should keep and encourage children to keep appropriate memorabilia of the time spent living at the home and help them record significant life events. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 14.5)  Extend the support that staff give to help young people develop emotional and mental resilience to cope without the home’s support. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 17, paragraph 3.27)  Ensure that where a young person’s preferences are unreasonable or cannot be

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Recommendations

met for safeguarding reasons, staff discuss this with the child to help them understand why. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 17, paragraph 3.21) This is with particular reference to staff having open and ongoing discussions which enable young people to show staff if they have developed sufficient understanding to warrant reassessment of risk management strategies.  Ensure that a note of the content and/or outcomes of supervision sessions is kept and that both the person giving the supervision and the staff member have a copy of the record. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 13.4) This is with particular reference to the manager’s own supervision. Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 5

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

. All young people have had a good experience of care since the current registered manager has been in post. The manager has driven a significant improvement in the quality of care practice. Staff welcome young people into the home very well, and prepare them well for their futures. For example, one young person came to the home as an emergency and was unable to speak English. Staff sensitively showed him around the home, gave him a pack of personal essentials and downloaded an ‘app’ that could translate into English for him. They stayed with him and were attentive and reassuring. Another young person received good support to move on to army basic training. Staff and the manager told him how proud they were of him and he said, ‘Thank you – I don’t really hate you all.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Young people are making good progress educationally and vocationally. Staff and the manager have creatively and diligently sought out the right placements for young people. They have worked tirelessly to encourage and help young people to attend. They act as good parents would, preparing young people for change in sensitive, practical ways. Two young people are doing well at the local high school because staff and the manager helped them get used to the change in advance. They drove past regularly in the summer holidays and took them for taster days. They arranged extra lessons in English for one young person and helped to select and interview the classroom assistant for another young person. They showed the young people photos and names of the teachers. One senior member of school staff said, ‘The home’s staff are brilliant – they really seem to care.’ One young person recently moved on to army training after successfully attending a military college course while living at the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff packed up all of the young person’s things on his request, so that he could go straight from his aunt’s home to the army training base. Staff took his things to him, bought him a St Christopher necklace for good luck, took him and his dad for a meal and took them both by car to the training base. This young person said, ‘I want to do this – I want you to come to my passing out – if it wasn’t for you, I would be in prison.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Young people experience well-planned care and good relationships with staff. Young people feel listened to and their emotional and physical health has improved as a result. For example, staff make sure that one young person is able to play in the football matches and take part in the training for both the school team and a local side. Staff got him a trampoline and set it up ready for him to come home to after his last day at junior school. They encourage and reward him for settling in bed on time, doing his homework and trying new foods. Staff help another young person to buy and cook food from his country of origin. They have sourced him a church where people from his country of origin worship. When a young person is often reluctant to engage, staff act quickly to make arrangements whenever that young person suggests an activity. For example, staff arranged to take one young person sea fishing and paintballing on the very days that he

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

requested these. One young person’s social worker said,

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

‘[Young person] could not be in a better place. He knows who will be on duty, he Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 6 gets one-to-one support and he can share his worries and anxiety. He will miss the love and affection that they have poured into him – he has been really lucky.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff and the manager make good-quality relationships with young people’s families and the professionals around them. This means that decisions are made and young people’s views and wishes are acted on. For example, young people get good support and advocacy when they want to be able to stay in this country. They are helped to renew contact with their families and friends, even when they live far away from them. They get consistent messages about what is allowed and their individual preferences are met as far as possible. For example, one young person downloads the latest chart music from his home country when staff regularly take him to an internet café and provide him with a suitable electronic device. Another young person was allowed to stay overnight with friends because staff and the social worker made prompt, informed decisions about this, just as good parents would.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The quality of individualised care that young people receive from staff has improved. One staff member said,

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

‘Be open, honest, try to understand, read between the lines, hear them, be accepting, start a new day. Reassure the young person that there is nothing we cannot sort; let them know that you are there for them.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff use clinical advice to enhance their care practice too. For example, clinical advice helped staff to see a possible link between one young person’s physical symptoms and the trauma and stress that he is suffering. Overall, the team’s good-quality and insightful care has improved young people’s self-confidence and their levels of engagement. For example, staff see a clear link between their individualised care and one young person successfully taking the step to start army training. However, staff do not keep a constant agenda in mind of what they will do and say to develop young people’s emotional and mental resilience. For example, they do not make and take every opportunity to help young people gain the resilience to be able to cope in a family. In addition, staff are not giving young people regular enough opportunities to keep and look at memorabilia and records of their time at the home.

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How well children and young people are helped and protected: good

The manager and staff manage young people’s behaviour well, using an empathic, respectful and sensitive approach. For example, the manager took time out with one young person over coffee to talk honestly and openly about the dangers of drug taking and anti-social behaviour when out with friends. The young person accepted her advice because of the supportive relationship between them, and was able to keep safe. Similarly, all staff discussed and provided a proportionate and helpful response when young people had knives in their possession. The intervention of the staff has meant that young people no longer feel the need to keep knives in order to feel safe.

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How well children and young people are helped and protected: good

Staff and the manager work well with other agencies to safeguard young people. For Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 7 example, staff worked well with the asylum worker, police, interpreter and social worker when an asylum-seeking young person went missing. However, young people are subject to some continuing risk management restrictions. Sometimes young people become frustrated because staff do not confidently explore and discuss the reasons for restrictions, for example limits on the use of technology. The manager and staff do not have an obvious agenda of work that aims to reduce young people’s actual risks. Staff do not evaluate what developmental progress and change young people have made, and therefore cannot judge very reliably whether young people are ready to take a particular risk.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager has been in post since December 2016. Staff and stakeholders value the effectiveness of her leadership. One staff member said,

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

‘She has come on board and we have got better as a team, always learning and moving on, I feel more confident. I felt that it was a mess here. We have job chats and talk about what I want.’ A social worker said, ‘Communication is excellent and I am up-to-date on what is happening in [young person’s] life. The manager excelled, tirelessly supporting and working alongside me in sorting out a senior school. She is proactive, an invaluable link and has gone above and beyond.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager has enabled the staff team to develop a clearer idea of how to help each young person. She makes good use of the organisation’s clinical advice and ambitiously models empathic, warm, individualised care. She has high expectations of what every young person can achieve. She has ensured that all staff access the organisation’s therapeutic care practice training. She has taught staff to focus on helping young people to feel better about themselves and their situations. She has steered staff away from punitive sanctions and fines because she cannot see evidence that these responses work. She said, ‘Staff took a long time to trust me, but now there is forward-thinking in their practice and the social workers see it.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager demonstrates excellent advocacy skills. She has proactively and creatively pushed for young people to get the education and therapy placements that suit their needs. Her liaison with virtual school heads, social workers, police, the Home Office and child and adolescent mental health services means that young people get timely support and make good progress in all areas. Equally, the warm and empathic approach that she uses with young people and their relatives means that young people have benefited from improved links with their families. However, there is no record of two young people’s addresses prior to moving to the home. This makes it hard for staff to establish contact with previous carers when this may be needed.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager has the confidence of the organisation’s leadership. She ensures that young people are only placed in the home when she has sufficient information to decide that their needs can be met, and that they match with the existing group of young people. She provides support and advice to other homes in the area, but young people Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 8 always know who is on duty and staff always know who they are working with. The manager and her staff never compromise in their commitment to young people at the home. However, the manager does not get written notes of her supervision meetings with her clinical supervisor and her line manager. This makes it harder for the manager to take timely action on advice given to her in the meetings.

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Information about this inspection

Inspectors have looked closely at the experiences and progress of children and young people. Inspectors considered the quality of work and the differences made to the lives of children and young people. They watched how professional staff work with children and young people and each other and discussed the effectiveness of help and care provided. Wherever possible, they talked to children and 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.

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Information about this inspection

Using the ‘Social care common inspection framework’, this inspection was carried out under the Care Standards Act 2000 to assess the effectiveness of the service, how it meets the core functions of the service as set out in legislation, 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’. Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Horizon Care Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Venture House, 12 Prospect Business Park, Longford Road, Cannock, Staffordshire WS11 0LG

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Children’s home details

Registered manager: Post vacant Prudence Shaw

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Inspector

Rachel Britten: social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC062406 10 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, further education and skills, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for children looked after, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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