Children's home run by Barnardiston Hall Preparatory School Limited in West Suffolk

Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 1 SC427652 Registered provider: Barnardiston Hall Preparatory School Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This is a privately owned home, registered to provide care for up to four children who have complex learning and social difficulties, including autism. The children tend to access the school run by the provider.

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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 requires improvement to be 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 February 2017

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: sustained effectiveness

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Key findings from this inspection

 The current three children placed at the home are well matched.  The children benefit significantly from the routine and structure to their day. Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 2  Each child attends school and their attendance is 100%.  Each child has contact with their family and the staff go above and beyond to facilitate and support this.  The children say that they like living in this home.  The staff encourage the children to learn positive coping strategies for managing any challenging emotions.  The children say that they do know that the staff are trying to help them and that mostly they are learning better ways to manage their emotions and behaviour.  The children access a range of activities in the local community.  The staff and the children have good, warm, nurturing relationships.  The staff and the children have fun together. They play games and laugh together.  The staff enjoy their jobs and like to be around the children.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Incidents and physical interventions have decreased.  The children do not go missing.  The registered manager is particularly child-centred.

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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

 The updates to the children’s risk assessments are poor.  Records of physical interventions do not consistently provide sufficient detail about the role of each member of staff. This is specifically when a floor hold is used.  The children are not actively encouraged to read their records and to add further information to them.  Information required in respect of every member of staff working in the home is not consistently available.  The registered manager has not had an annual appraisal.

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

14/02/2017 Interim Sustained effectiveness 28/06/2016 Full Good 24/02/2016 Interim Sustained effectiveness 02/06/2015 Full Good Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 3

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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

The registered person must recruit staff using recruitment procedures that are designed to ensure children’s safety by ensuring that full and satisfactory information is available in relation to the individual in respect of Schedule 2. (Regulation 32(3)(d)) 22/12/2017

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees have their performance and fitness to perform their roles appraised at least once every year. (Regulation 33(4)(c)) 22/12/2017

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that within 24 hours of the use of a measure of restraint in relation to a child in the home that a record is made which includes the name of the person who used the measure, and of any other person present when the measure was used. (Regulation 35(3)(a)(vi))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, when a child is held on the floor, record each member of staff’s role in the hold. 22/12/17

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Recommendations

 Ensure staff continually and actively assess the risks to each child and the arrangements in place to protect them. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 42, paragraph 9.5)  The registered person should ensure that staff can access appropriate facilities and resources to support their training needs, and should understand the key role they play in training and development of staff in the home. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.11) In particular, staff should receive training to raise awareness on working with sexualised behaviour, as well as training about attachment.  Ensure that children are actively encouraged to read their records and to add further information to them. They should be regularly reminded of their rights to see information kept about them and be given information about how they might

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Recommendations

be supported to access their records in later life. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.6) Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 4

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

This home is registered for up to four children. Since the interim inspection in February 2017, three of the children have continued to live at the home with one another. The children say that they are like brothers because they fall out with one another and always find a way to become friends again. Each of the children likes living in the home. Each has an established structure and routine to their day. The placing local authority social worker for one of the children said, ‘Living in this home gives our child the security and secure base that he needs.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The children attend the school run by the provider, which is within easy reach by car, so the staff take the children to school each day and collect them. This helps the staff to build relationships with the children and to prepare the children for transitions and the next phase of their day.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Each of the children enjoys going to school and they have 100% attendance. Two of the children have the opportunity to attend classes during the week at a local mainstream school and one child spends time at a local college. The headteacher said, ‘Each of these children has a school leadership post. They are doing brilliantly at school and arrive each day ready and prepared.’ This represents a significant achievement for each of these children, some of whom have previously missed out substantially on education. One child said, ‘Before I came to live here, I could not read, write or spell. Now I can. The staff here help me to make sure that I get my homework done and they say to me that I do have to practise reading different things.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

There have been some slight changes within the staff team, but this does not appear to have had a significant effect on the children. All of the children say, ‘All of the staff that work here are good.’ Observations from this inspection are that staff share warm and respectful relationships with each child. Two of the children are looked after on a one-to- one basis and one child is looked after by two adults. As a result, the staff learn quickly about each child’s social and behavioural triggers and this information increasingly helps the staff to defuse potentially volatile scenarios.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Some of the children access external therapeutic services and the staff support this by attending the sessions with the child. This builds trust and helps to provide the staff who attend the sessions with some insight into the child’s diagnosis and the effect of early childhood experiences. The children make progress in their ability to make decisions and to manage their feelings of anger and agitation. One child said, ‘When we get upset, the staff here talk to us calmly, they never raise their voice, and that helps me to get calmer quickly.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The registered manager and the staff team are committed to ensuring that each of the children has contact with their family and those who are important to them. They go over and above to ensure that contact does take place, for example by driving them to Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 5 different parts of the country. The staff help to prepare the children emotionally and encourage them to talk about how contact with their family makes them feel.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

There is a homely atmosphere. The children say that they feel that staff do a good job of consulting with them individually and as a group. They recognise that the staff try to help them and do their best to encourage them; for example, to be more independent in and around the home with cooking, laundry and light housework. This recognises that these children will live independently when they get older.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The children lead busy lives. The house and the garden are spacious and provide ample accommodation for each of the children to run around if they need to relax or to be comfortable. Sometimes the children use the living room to spend time together and to take turns playing on their consoles. The staff and the registered manager like to ensure that each of the children has fun and has constant access to a wide range of activities. Some of the children play football in the local community, they go roller skating and sometimes attend a youth club. At home, the staff play board games as well as computer and chase games with the children. The staff and the children go out together as a group, for example for a meal, to the cinema or to a local attraction.

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

For approximately two months, four children lived in the home. During this time, the dynamic of the group changed. The staff were managing more incidents and outbursts from the children and as a result the frequency and intensity of incidents rose at this time. However, the frequency of incidents has reduced significantly since one child has moved on and the remaining three children have been living together. The registered manager said, ‘I wanted to give the fourth child the opportunity to live here. When I saw that this was not working for the other children, I knew that I needed to end the placement.’ This means that the registered manager and the staff are responsive and prepared to make difficult decisions for the good of the group. One placing social worker commented that, ‘The home has gone back to having a family feel.’

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

The frequency of physical interventions has decreased significantly in the last three months. The staff do use physical intervention when alternative strategies have failed to de-escalate behavioural challenges. One child said, ‘I am really proud that I have not been held for nearly three months.’ The majority of holds are brief and result in the children calming quickly following minimal physical intervention. The records show that on some occasions children are held by staff on the floor. Following each incident, the staff do write records and the registered manager does speak to the staff and the children. However, the records are not consistently clear enough. This is because when more than two staff are involved in restraining a child, there is not enough information to show on every occasion which member of staff used the specific measure. This means that after the event, should a child, their parent or placing local authority ask for detailed

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

written information about each member of staff’s role in the incident, the information available is vague.

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

The registered manager has written the children’s care plans. These are improving and Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 6 show that he knows the character and personality of each of the children well. He has written risk assessments to help staff to be aware of potential behavioural triggers, which means that this regulation raised at the last inspection is met. The risk assessments are well written and the levels of risk are clear. This is a significant improvement. However, the process for updating the risk assessment is poor and this is because staff write month after month that there is ‘no change’. The process for understanding and assessing risk is not dynamic. This shortfall has minimal impact at this time because this is a small home and some of the staff know the children well and use the knowledge that they have about the child to manage risk. Nonetheless, this approach to recording information could result in mistakes being made.

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

The staff use incentives and rewards to encourage and promote positive behaviours and to help the children to resolve conflict positively. They often encourage the children to think about what an appropriate sanction might be for any given situation. Recently, this has been particularly effective and has helped the children to take responsibility for their actions. One placing local authority social worker said, ’The staff manage and mediate very well. Our child is significantly calmer and in control of his mood.’

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

The registered manager refers any allegations or matters of concern about staff conduct to the designated officer for the local authority. The children do not go missing from this home. The staff are clear about the action to take in the event of one of the children leaving the premises without permission. The manager is not complacent and has the required information ready to share with other agencies in the event of any of the children going missing from the home. One member of staff said, ‘When our child is angry, he will stand at the door testing and threatening to leave us but we know that he won’t.’ The children are confident that the staff would follow them immediately if they did leave the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

The registered manager has been in post for over 18 months. He continues to work towards the completion of the required level 5 diploma. The registered manager is very involved in direct practice; he is particularly child-focused and he likes to ensure that he devotes individual time to each of the children by taking them out. As a result, the children do frequently seek him out and ask him to spend time with them.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

There have been no complaints from agencies or parents. The registered manager is keen to work transparently and to build effective and purposeful relationships with placing authority social workers and other agencies. For example, some months ago the local police were invited into the home to talk to the children with the staff about discrimination and bullying.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

To complement regular communication with the placing local authority social workers, the registered manager ensures that the staff produce monthly written reports which are designed to summarise each child’s progress. The registered manager has acted on feedback from placing social workers about the monthly reports to improve the content. The children are not encouraged to read or to contribute to their plans and this means Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 7 that the children are not as aware as they could be of the information kept about them or their right to see this information.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

The independent person visits the home monthly and provides feedback to the registered manager to help him to improve systems in the home. The staff meet regularly with the registered manager for supervision and as a group. In these meetings, they talk about the children and share ideas about how to ensure that the home is running smoothly. The provider has introduced online training for the staff and this is helping to improve opportunities for them to increase their understanding and responsibilities in some areas such as child sexual exploitation and ‘Prevent’. The breadth of training available does not go far enough because, for example, the staff do not receive the opportunity to learn about attachment or working with children who display sexualised behaviours. Effective and relevant training related to meeting the needs of the children helps to boost staff confidence in their direct work with the children.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

The staffing ratios are high and so the home continues to use agency staff to make up any staff shortages on shifts throughout the week. The registered manager tries to ensure that the same agency staff come to work in the home as much as possible. The manager provides on-call support. The procedure for agency staff coming to work in the home is improving. For example, the registered manager receives the outcomes from formal checks. The registered manager is providing some supervision to some of the agency staff who work in the home more often. However, the registered manager does not receive evidence to verify what qualifications an agency member of staff may have. This means that the registered manager does not know what knowledge an agency member of staff has about working in childcare and with children with learning difficulties or autistic spectrum disorder Some of the permanent staff working in the

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

home have transferred across from other roles from within the wider company. One member of staff had applied to the organisation to be a school learning support assistant and is now working as a residential care worker. While this example has no direct impact for the children, it demonstrates that there is not a consistent approach to ensuring that all of the required information is available for each adult working in the home and so this increases the likelihood of individuals who may be unsuitable for the role working in this home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

The responsible individual is in regular contact with the registered manager. They meet for supervision and to discuss resources and the children’s progress. The registered manager has not yet had an annual appraisal and so this means that he does not have the opportunity to reflect upon his strengths and areas for professional development in the role of registered manager.

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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 Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 8 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: SC427652 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Barnardiston Hall Preparatory School Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Garland House, Garland Street, PO Box 10, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP33 1EZ

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Inspector

Rosie Davie, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC427652 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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