Children's home run by Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council

Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 1 SC037670 Registered provider: Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council

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Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This local authority service provides short-break care to young people who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The service is registered to provide short-break care for up to two young people at any one time. It may only provide care under short- break arrangements and not for young people to live permanently at the home.

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Information about this children’s home

Inspection dates: 17 to 18 November 2017

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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: 27 January 2017

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Good

Overall judgement at last inspection: sustained effectiveness

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Good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none

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Key findings from this inspection

 Children enjoy positive experiences that enrich their lives and provide them with time and space away from the tensions at home. They are able to relax, think and start to talk about their experiences. Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 2  Children receive the personalised support that they need to help them to feel safe and start to deal with the difficulties that they may be facing at home, in school or out in the community. The quality of the support that children receive is helping them and their families to make progress and achieve better outcomes.  Children’s emotional well-being, resilience and confidence improve. They enjoy better relationships with their families and do better at school. Staff help families to deal with their problems positively and to make sustained changes that reduce the likelihood of their children living away from home.  Children feel safe, and enjoy warm and trusting relationships with the staff.

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Key findings from this inspection

Staff enable children to express their wishes and feelings, and to take part in different, interesting and meaningful activities.  Children’s stays are carefully planned in a very welcoming, supportive and safe environment. The registered manager and staff use positive relationships with the children, their parents and carers, social workers, schools and health professionals to ensure that each child receives the best possible support.  Effective leadership and management ensure that children continue to receive a high quality of care that meets their needs. Managers understand what the service does well, and they continuously strive to make further improvements to develop the service in children’s best interests and to adapt to changing levels of demand.

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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

 Some improvements are needed to the quality of the accommodation.  The independent visitor does not always consult with children, parents, social workers, and other people working with the children, to inform the assessment of the home’s effectiveness in promoting and safeguarding children’s welfare.  Children’s case records should be written in a style that helps children understand what has been written about them.

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

27/01/2017 Interim Sustained effectiveness 29/09/2016 Interim Sustained effectiveness 27/01/2016 Full Good 12/05/2015 Interim Sustained effectiveness Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 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 quality of purpose of care standard is that children receive care from staff who understand the children’s home’s overall aims and the outcomes it seeks to achieve for children and use this understanding to deliver care that meets children’s needs and supports them to fulfil their potential.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure that the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed and furnished to meet the needs of each child and enable each child to participate in the daily life of the home. (Regulation 6(1) & (2) (c))

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Requirement Due date

This relates to ensuring that the plans for the renovation of the kitchen are completed, a shower curtain is fitted in the bathroom, and the flooring in the kitchen, toilet, bathroom and staff bedroom give a domestic rather than ‘institutional’ impression. 31/01/2018

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Requirement Due date

When the independent person is carrying out a visit, the registered person must help the independent person, if they consent, to interview in private such of the children, their parents and relatives, as the independent person requires. (Regulation 44(2)(a))

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Requirement Due date

This relates to ensuring that the independent person must consult children, their parents and relatives on their views about the home’s care to inform and support continued improvement in the quality of care provided. 31/01/2018

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Recommendations

 Information about the child must always be recorded in a way that will be helpful to the child. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4) In particular, records written from the child’s perspective should always include the words that the child used and use straightforward language that helps the child understand what is being written about them and their views. Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 4

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children and their families receive effective support that meets their assessed needs and helps them overcome difficulties. Staff are successful in helping children to continue to live with their families when it is their best interests. In most cases, the difficulties in families improve. Children make progress and see improvements in their emotional well- being, participation in education, personal safety, self-esteem and confidence, social skills, understanding their feelings and managing their behaviour, and personal relationships.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children feel able to talk to the friendly and caring staff, and they accept the advice and guidance available to them. A child said: ‘It is working, it’s helping a lot. Talking to my key worker is helping to sort things out and problems at home. I see my key worker every Tuesday – she is friendly, mostly we just talk and it is helping.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The arrangements for children’s care and support are sensitively and carefully planned. Children have opportunities to get to know staff and visit the house before they come to stay. Importantly, staff really try to find about children as individuals and their interests. A social worker said: ‘Before he stayed, staff spoke to him and what he liked doing and have made sure he got to do it.’ Children and their families are fully involved in the decision to use the service and invariably see it as a positive choice. Staff’s positive working relationships with social workers and other support services mean that children and their families receive the best possible personal support. Children and their families are involved in assessing the problems and planning the support that they feel they need. Their short-break plans include their views and a detailed picture of the objective, including what needs to be done to meet the young person’s needs and to tackle the

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

identified problems. The plans set out clearly the specific work that staff should carry out with young people during their stay, for example providing opportunities to have friendships outside the family or to explore ways of managing their feelings and frustrations.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children’s plans are regularly reviewed by children, staff, families, social workers, teachers and practitioners from the other services involved. This ensures that they continue to get the right support to help plan for their future. Everyone involved, including the child, reflects on the progress and effectiveness of the plan, and thinks about what needs to happen next. These review meetings are a helpful means of evaluating progress and outcomes. Information is shared between the staff and their partners effectively and efficiently. This means that staff can be responsive to family crises, emerging needs and risks. It also means that staff can change the focus of their work to look at previously unrecognised issues. The review of children’s plans means that decisions can be made about when the service should be reduced or come to an end. This is always carefully considered and assessed to ensure that children continue to

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

have the support that they need, including ongoing support from other services.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Most children’s participation in education improves after they start getting support from Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 5 the service. Staff work effectively with children, parents and teachers to help children to make measurable steps to achieving their educational potential. They understand the possible barriers to children’s learning and support parents to make sure that their child is getting the right support to meet their educational needs and to address any problems in school. Staff have attended meetings at schools to support and advocate for parents. The short stays provide children with opportunities to enjoy and achieve new skills, including arts and crafts, cooking, baking, shopping and managing money. This informal learning is helping children to build their confidence in their talents and skills.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children staying together usually get on extremely well. They have enough personal space in which to relax and reflect, as well as opportunities to spend time with other children and staff, playing board games or watching television and films. They enjoy meaningful activities outside the home, including going go-karting, fruit picking, playing golf and ice skating.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff actively promote children’s physical health and emotional well-being. They have a healthy diet and get lots of physical exercise. Staff have a detailed understanding of children’s specific health needs, and manage their health with sensitivity and confidence. They closely monitor children to make sure that they are healthy. They work with families to ensure that the children always have suitable medical advice and treatment when they are feeling unwell or if children are concerned about their health.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children come to stay in a comfortable family house. A child said: ‘I was surprised what it is like – it’s just like my house, not like I thought a children’s home would be like.’ Children have their own space in pleasant and well-furnished bedrooms. However, some work is required to improve the overall quality of the accommodation. The registered manager’s plan for the renovation of the kitchen has not started yet: a shower curtain needs to be fitted in the bathroom; and the flooring in the kitchen, toilet, bathroom and staff bedroom is more appropriate to an ‘institutional’ setting rather a family home.

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

Children stay in a safe and supportive home. A child said: ‘I feel safe here. I feel able to talk to staff and my key worker.’

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

Staff are clear about their roles and responsibilities in protecting children. They are vigilant and alert to the signs of abuse, exploitation, extremism and neglect. Staff take appropriate action to involve social workers and the police when they have concerns about children’s safety. Staff actively and continuously assess all the risks to individual children and take appropriate and reasonable precautions to ensure children’s safety. They work effectively with children, parents, social workers, schools and health professionals, and the police to understand and manage the risks to children’s welfare. The risks to children from going missing from home and sexual exploitation have significantly reduced since they started to get support from the service. Staff are helping children to recognise risk and manage their own safety. A child said: ‘I needed help because I have been in a bad situation. I was going missing from home and getting

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

involved with the police.’ Her social worker said that she is becoming safer because staff Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 6 are ‘helping her manage her emotions and behaviour and to think before making decisions’.

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

Staff’s detailed understanding of children’s circumstances, assessed needs and risks is helping them to give effective support to children and their families. They have constructive relationships with both children and their main carers. Together they are working through difficulties and strengthening family relationships. Staff provide parents and grandparents with clear and helpful advice and guidance that is helping them to manage children’s behaviour effectively. This has included helping them to build their confidence as parents, and to put in place suitable daily routines and boundaries that have helped children go to school on time and to get on better with their parents, grandparents and brothers and sisters. Children’s short stays are helping to reduce stressful situations at home and are proving beneficial for everyone. A social worker said: ‘the child’s relationship with his nan was strained and the respite has been

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

positive. It gives them both a break. It is working brilliantly. He enjoys his time there, and his nan gets a rest and as a result is more able to deal with things on a day-to-day basis.’

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

Importantly, short stays provide children with time away from the difficulties at home and the time and space to think about what has been going on. Staff make sure that children have positive experiences and have fun, as well as the chance to talk about their feelings and worries. A child said: ‘Staff are good at getting to know me, they find out what is going and give me chance to get things off my chest. It’s a relief and I feel able to talk to my key worker and the other staff.’

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

Staff help children to understand their feelings and control their behaviour at home and school and in the community. A child said: ‘I get help with emotions and I have been able to keep calmer lately – it has helped me to stop lashing out at people.’ Staff help children to understand about socially acceptable behaviour. They challenge and discuss poor and dangerous behaviour, for example anti-social behaviour on ‘Mischief Night’, constructively. This helps children think about the impact of this behaviour on other people and themselves.

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

Staff actively help children to understand how to build friendships and what makes a positive and healthy relationship. They encourage children to learn how to deal with problems and resolve disagreements constructively. They use activities to help children make new friends. Friendly rivalry in baking competition has helped two children to become friends. They encourage each other and celebrate each other’s triumphs. Staff have helped to maintain and develop this positive relationship by arranging for them to come to stay at the same time. A social worker said: ‘Spending time with other children during short stays has helped. The child is more confident in school and he is less isolated. He is now someone that other children want to be friends with and now has a social network.’ His relationship with his mother is also improving because they are starting to do more things together, including shopping and cooking a meal.

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

Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 7

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager and senior residential childcare officer provide strong and effective leadership. They ensure that the arrangements for children coming to stay and being supported in their families are thoroughly planned and well organised in each child’s best interests. Children and families get a reliable and supportive service that makes a meaningful difference to their lives. Children come to stay in a friendly, safe and homely environment. They receive a high standard of personalised care that meets their assessed needs. The staff also provide the children and their families with excellent support in their own homes. The service is achieving its aim to help struggling families to deal with their difficulties and support children to remain living at home, regardless of the challenges presented by the situation.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Leaders and the registered manager have taken action to address the weaknesses identified at the last inspection in relation to the understanding and management of risks to each child, providing children with continuity of care, staff training, the quality of children’s records and recruitment of staff. They use their monitoring systems effectively to give them an up-to-date and accurate understanding of the performance and impact that the service is having on children’s experiences and outcomes. They use this information to identify their priorities and to improve the service. They have taken decisive action to improve the referral process to make sure that children receive the right support to meet their needs. Children, families and social workers know about what the service offers. Social workers know what information the registered manager needs to make an informed decision about the service’s ability to meet children’s needs. An

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

independent person provides impartial scrutiny of the running of the home and assessment of how effectively children’s welfare is promoted and safeguarded. However, the independent person does not always talk to the children, or get the views of children’s families, to help get a fuller picture of children’s experiences of living in the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager and senior residential childcare officer have created a supportive environment for staff to provide children with a high standard of care and consistency. The well-planned staffing arrangements ensure that there are sufficient knowledgeable, experienced, skilful and qualified staff available to meet children’s assessed needs. The highly motivated members of staff clearly enjoy spending time with children and are keen to make a positive difference to their lives. Children receive the continuity of care that helps them form positive relationships with the people supporting them. They usually come to stay when their key worker is there. In addition, they spend time with their key workers before they first come to stay and every week between each visit.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Leaders and the registered manager ensure that recruitment, supervision and performance management of staff protect children and minimise potential risks to them. Since the last inspection, they have introduced a system for keeping a record of the verification of employment references and information about a person’s practice, experiences, abilities, and the reasons they left their last job from their previous employers. The registered manager and senior residential childcare officer provide each member of staff with excellent support, guidance and encouragement. Staff have regular Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 8 opportunities through practice-related supervision with the registered manager to discuss their work and performance. Regular peer supervision meetings and team meetings are playing an important part in making sure that staff understand children’s needs and that plans work consistently to meet children’s needs. These meetings enable

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

the staff team to reflect together on children’s progress and share skills and ideas about the best way to help children and their families.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Leaders and the registered manager support and encourage staff to develop their knowledge and skills through up-to-date training and practice improvement events relevant to the needs of the children and their families, including safeguarding, behaviour management and mediation, emotional health and well-being and autism. They are also responsive to specific needs for families; they have recently run a training event about the dangers of cannabis with the local young people’s substance misuse service for staff, parents and relatives. This has helped build their awareness and understanding of the issue and the help available. Staff have the appropriate residential childcare qualifications and have opportunities for continuous professional development relevant to their roles, including working towards qualifications in the management of children’s residential services.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager and senior residential childcare officer ensure that children’s case records, including risk assessments and short-break plans, are up to date and include a detailed picture of children’s starting points, the full range of their needs and risks, and their experiences and progress. This is helping leaders and managers to monitor and measure the impact that the service is having on children’s lives. However, plans written from the child’s perspective do not always include the words that the child actually used or straightforward language that helps the child understand what is being written about them and clearly shows their views.

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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: SC037670 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Knowsley MBC, Children’s Services, Huyton Municipal Buildings, 6th Floor, Huyton, Knowsley, Merseyside L36 9YU

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Inspector

Nick Veysey, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC037670 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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