Children's home run by Carehome Limited in Liverpool

Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 1 SC044276

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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 private children’s home provides care for children who may have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties, learning disabilities, physical disabilities and sensory impairments. It accommodates up to four children in the main house. In addition, a satellite house provides accommodation for up to two children who benefit from living in a smaller group of children.

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Information about this children’s home

Inspection dates: 22 to 23 November 2017

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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Outstanding

How well children and young people are helped and protected Outstanding

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Outstanding

The effectiveness of leaders and managers Outstanding

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Outstanding

The children’s home provides highly effective services that consistently exceed the standards of good. The actions of the children’s home contribute to significantly improved outcomes and positive experiences for children and young people who need help, protection and care.

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Outstanding

Overall judgement at last inspection: Improved effectiveness

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Outstanding

Enforcement action since last inspection: None Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 2

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Key findings from this inspection

This children’s home is outstanding because:

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Key findings from this inspection

 Children live in a loving, nurturing and supportive home where they enjoy extremely positive experiences. They have trusting and meaningful relationships with the staff.  Children receive an exceptionally high quality of care that is meeting their individual needs and making an important difference to all of their lives. They sustain progress across every aspect of their development. Children have successfully moved on to live in new permanent families.  The registered manager’s highly productive working relationships with social workers, teachers, and police and health services ensure that children receive the right support to meet their needs. The registered manager takes decisive action when she is worried that children are struggling or are not getting the right help from social workers and schools.  The manager and staff have built an exceptionally strong safeguarding culture at the home. The children are always listened to and their views are taken seriously.

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Key findings from this inspection

Children feel safe and have a strong sense of belonging. The staff’s exceptional safeguarding practice ensures that they are protected from bullying, aggression, abuse and exploitation.  The manager and staff’s consistent and well-informed approach to helping children to manage their feelings is making a positive difference to their emotional well-being and helping them to build positive relationships. The manager and staff know the children extremely well and are skilled at seeing beyond children’s behaviour to try to understand the underlying problems. The excellent use of restorative and sensory approaches are highly effective in helping children to manage their feelings and understand the impact of their behaviour constructively.  Highly effective managers lead a strong, stable, skilled, experienced and cohesive staff team. Everyone has high aspirations for every child, regardless of the challenges, to enjoy the same opportunities and experiences as other children and

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Key findings from this inspection

to have happy and fulfilling lives.  The leaders and managers have an extremely detailed and well-informed understanding of the strengths of the home and the areas for development. They accurately measure the effectiveness of the home’s impact on children’s lives and use this information to improve the quality of care.

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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

 Include the views of children and any professionals in the reviews of staff member’s performance and suitability.  Written reports about children should show their progress from their starting Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 3 points and the impact of the quality of care provided on their experiences and outcomes.

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

14/03/2017 Interim Improved effectiveness 01/11/2016 Full Outstanding 29/03/2016 Interim Improved effectiveness 25/01/2016 Full Outstanding

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Recommendations

 Take into account, where reasonable and practical, the views of the children and other professionals, when reviewing the performance of each member of staff. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 13.5)

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Recommendations

 Ensure that information about the child is always recorded in a way that is helpful to the child. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4) This relates to reports about children, such as end of placement reports, showing children’s progress from their starting points and the impact of the quality of care provided on children’s experiences and outcomes.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children enjoy extremely positive experiences while living in this safe, nurturing and comfortable home. The registered manager and staff understand the children’s needs extremely well and bring much needed stability to their lives. The registered manager and staff give children an exceptional level of care that is skilfully tailored to meet children’s personal needs. As a result, children with complex needs are making sustained improvements in every aspect of their lives. A social worker said:

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

‘The care they provide for [the child’s name] is outstanding. Staff are warm and nurturing towards him, which is essential in his case as he seeks this type of attention. The care home is aware of his situation and ensure that all his identified Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 4 needs are met.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

The quality of the relationships between the children and staff is actively contributing to children’s progress. All of the children are extremely positive about the staff and living at this home. They have strong and trusting relationships with the staff. A child said, ‘The staff are nice and friendly. They’re helpful.’ An independent reviewing officer said:

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

‘[The child’s name] has a received good, consistent quality of care through a consistent manager and staff team since he first arrived in 2013. Staff members, particularly his key worker, know him well and I observe good rapport and understanding of his day-to-day needs and development.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

The registered manager and staff always make sure that children’s voices are heard regarding what happens to them, including about how often they see their family, wanting to find out more about their lives and the reasons why they do not live with their family, and plans for their future. Staff carefully balance the child’s wishes against what they judge to be the best interests of the child. Staff understand the importance for a child of finding out about their background, but sensitively work out how best to share this information with them and support them through the process. Staff encourage and support children to express their views assertively. Children are becoming confident in sharing their opinions and raising issues with adults, and some children take part in children-in-care councils.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

The registered manager and staff are highly effective at working with social workers, foster carers, schools and health services to ensure that each child’s needs are met. They share important information about children’s experiences, progress and any concerns about their safety extremely well with the other people involved in supporting each child in their daily lives. The manager and staff work tenaciously to make sure that children always get the best possible support to meet their needs and to improve their lives. The registered manager always takes appropriate action when she is concerned that social workers are not getting it right for children. This has involved her making complaints to a local authority to ensure that a child’s move to live with foster carers was properly planned and went at a pace that was best for the child. A senior manager from the local authority wrote to the registered manager and said:

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

‘I would like to thank you for all the care and support that you have given to [the child’s name] and for advocating on his behalf at this crucial time. I have no doubt that the care he has received from you will contribute to his progress moving forward.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

The registered manager ensures that each child’s care is planned thoroughly and their plans are reviewed to make sure they continue to meet their needs. She considers children’s needs carefully and only agrees to children moving into the home once she is satisfied that the staff have the skills and knowledge to respond effectively to meet a child’s needs. When children move into the home, it is always carefully planned to help them feel welcomed and settled. Before they move in, children have plenty of opportunities to visit, to have a look around and to meet staff and the other children. A child said, ‘I came to look around before moving in. I met one of the other children and Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 5 liked it. I like the back garden because I like to play outside.’ His social worker confirmed that his introduction was handled extremely well. ‘He enjoys living there and loves his

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

room. They [staff] made it special for him. He chose his own bedding and how his room is decorated and he has plenty of space for all his things.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

The registered manager and staff play an active role in making sure that those children who live a long way from their home have easy access to health, education and therapeutic services. They also enable children to maintain important links with their families and home areas. Children see and speak regularly to their families, and some children routinely stay overnight with their families. This is helping children to maintain and improve important relationships. Children’s friends and family receive a warm welcome when they visit the home. Staff provide children with excellent emotional support when seeing their families and alert social workers when they have concerns. The staff understand that it can be a difficult time for children and make every effort to ensure that it is a safe and positive experience for everyone.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Recently, the registered manager and staff have successfully supported a child to move permanently to live with foster carers, in line with his agreed plan. The child and his key worker identified the type of family that he wanted and would best suit his needs and where he wanted to live. The child was able to get the things he wanted, and importantly his new family lived near his school. The staff supported him emotionally and practically to prepare for his move. They were determined to ensure that this was a positive move for him and that it was managed well so that the child knew what was happening. The staff worked extremely well with his new foster carers, sharing information about his needs and interests, and making sure things happened at a pace he could manage. His new foster carer said:

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

‘Staff fully supported [the child’s name] when he felt the move was going too fast. They supported him through this as well. They advocated at the local authority to extend his stay until he was ready. Because of this support it put [the child’s name] in control and happier. Staff’s main priority was [the child’s name] and the positive start to the new placement.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

The exceptionally high quality of care children receive is helping them to make sustained progress in relation to education, health and emotional well-being. All of the children take part in full-time education, and their school attendance is exceptionally high. Staff provide children with an extremely stimulating environment that actively promotes children’s learning and development. Children’s daily routines support their participation in education effectively. They have plenty of books, computers, art materials, toys, games and other educational resources. Children enjoy learning and take part in school events and trips, including holidays, and are achieving and making very good progress. An independent reviewing officer said, ‘Educationally [the child’s name] is more settled, engaged and is capable of good GCSE results.’ The staff have an excellent understanding of children’s educational needs, plans, progress and achievements. They keep in regular

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

contact with teachers and learning mentors, attend parents’ evenings and take part in school events. The staff work very closely with the schools to support children’s education and tackle any barriers to their learning and progress. This includes identifying the best school to meet each child’s learning needs and helping children to settle into Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 6 new schools.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children take part in a wide range of fun and exciting activities, both at the home and when in the community. They enjoy the same opportunities and social experiences as other children, including seeing the latest films at the cinema, going out for meals, seeing friends, going to youth clubs, playing computer games, trampolining and climbing. They are actively supported to develop their talents and interests. The staff ensure that children have all the clothing and equipment that they need to take part in their interests .

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children live in a healthy environment that actively promotes their physical health and emotional well-being. They enjoy very healthy and varied diets and take plenty of physical exercise. Staff have an excellent understanding of children’s specific health needs and manage their health with sensitivity and confidence. The staff closely monitor children to make sure that they are healthy, supporting them to attend routine health checks, including the dentist. Staff also ensure that the children always have suitable medical advice and treatment when they are feeling unwell or if children are concerned about their health or the impact of their medication. The staff make sure that treatment plans are consistently followed and that the arrangements for dealing with medication are safe. They also encourage and support children to accept help from counselling services, which promotes their emotional well-being.

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

The registered manager and staff team’s exceptional safeguarding practice protects children from harm and has brought sustained improvements to children’s lives. Children feel safe and have a strong sense of belonging. They very much feel at home and feel able to talk to their staff when they are upset, worried or uncertain. Children trust the staff because they know that they will be listened to and helped.

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

The registered manager and staff are highly skilled in recognising the signs and symptoms of abuse and neglect, and children’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation. They are vigilant and take prompt and decisive action to deal with any concerns about the children’s safety. The staff have effective relationships with the local police, social workers, local authorities, schools and health professionals. A well-established professional network works together successfully to identify the risks facing children. For example, this includes taking appropriate action when one child was persistently going missing from home. The registered manager and staff acted quickly to deal with the situation, including calling multi-agency meetings. The manager worked tirelessly with the child’s social worker and the police to find the child, understand the reasons for him going missing, help him understand the dangers involved, and work out how to support

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

him to keep him safe. The missing from home coordinator for the police said:

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

‘I cannot fault their approach in reporting and dealing with risks and concerns. I have every confidence in how they deal with children missing from care. They do everything that is asked of them. Staff were very proactive trying to find him and Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 7 tried everything to keep him safe.’

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

The registered manager and staff continually assess the risks to each child and the arrangements to protect them. They understand and manage the current level of risk for each child exceptionally well. They actively take into account children’s changing needs, circumstances, behaviour, health and emotional well-being. The registered manager and staff reflect carefully on how these changes affect the individual child and the impact on the other children. They adapt protective measures to the level of risk and ensure that they measure how effective the strategies are in reducing risks. They carefully balance risk and the need for protection with enabling children to take risks as part of their development. As a result, children are able to make their own informed choices, have built their resilience and have become more independent. The registered manager takes action when she has concerns that the risks for young people are too high for them to

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

continue living at the home safely. Changes in the care arrangements for two children when they have moved on have resulted in improvements for these children and in a much more settled home environment for everyone.

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

Staff balance protecting children with enabling them to take appropriate and reasonable risks effectively. This includes encouraging children to spend time with friends in the community. Staff take reasonable precautions to promote children’s confidence and independence in the community, and to promote their understanding of how to use social media safely. They help children to understand risk and develop the skills to manage risk and keep themselves and others safe. This greatly helps their personal growth.

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

The registered manager and staff help children to manage their feelings and behaviour, through building positive relationships with children in a safe and reliable environment. Their practice is underpinned by a detailed understanding of attachment theory and trauma. Their warm and authentic approach is helping children to develop confident attachments with adults and to feel emotionally secure. The staff see beyond children’s presenting behaviour and clearly understand how children’s experiences may leave them feeling rejected, anxious, confused and angry, and struggling to trust adults. Staff use their expertise in life-story work to help children to make sense of their experiences and find answers to questions that they have about their family and what has happened to them. Staff’s well-thought out and sensitive work with children about their backgrounds has helped children to build new and positive relationships with their families and to feel

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

confident about moving to live with foster carers. Staff are also trained and skilled in helping children to understand and manage their feelings constructively. This involves helping children to talk about what is upsetting them, as well as helping children to find ways to calm down. The use of breathing and sensory techniques, including massaging hands and use of favourite smells, has been highly effective in helping some children understand and cope with their feelings and frustrations.

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

The registered manager and staff have high but reasonable expectations for standards of behaviour. They help children to understand and develop socially acceptable behaviour and appropriate personal boundaries. Consequently, children are helped to make significant progress in their personal care and managing their feelings and behaviour, and to get along with other people. Children are very good at helping each Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 8 other feel at home. The children usually get on well, but they do fall out. Staff quickly pick up when there is something wrong and are very aware of the risk of bullying. The staff deal with disagreements and bullying behaviour effectively. Their restorative approach encourages children to talk about what is upsetting them, to understand the impact of their behaviour and to work through the problem together. A member of staff helped a child understand how his use of racist language made other people feel and its

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

impact on him as well. This constructive approach helps to avoid children reinforcing negative feelings about themselves or feeling rejected. Instead, they see that staff want to help them sort out a problem.

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

When children struggle to manage their feelings and control their behaviour, staff take appropriate action to manage the situation safely, including using restraint. Staff keep detailed records of every time they have restrained a child. The records provide a detailed picture of what happened, what staff did to try to manage the situation before using restraint, and if anyone had any injuries as a result. The managers review each restraint thoroughly, including talking to the children and staff involved. They identify effective practice and respond promptly to any concerns. This careful evaluation of restraint and behaviour management helped the registered manager to identify when things were not working for particular children and therefore the manager was able to make changes to help them. A child’s social worker said:

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

‘He very often displays challenging and aggressive behaviour and at times has physically assaulted staff. They deal with his behaviour in the best way possible. They attempt to deescalate the situation on all occasions. His safety always comes first to the staff even during an outburst, which at times can be difficult to manage.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager has been in charge of the home since April 2013. She is an assured and inspirational manager, with extensive experience and knowledge of children’s residential care. She consistently provides strong and effective leadership with an unwavering focus on improving children’s lives. She sees to it that children live in a stable, nurturing and safe family home, where they receive an extremely high standard of personalised care. The whole staff team is ambitious for every child to achieve their potential and for them to lead happy and fulfilling lives. Their determination to improve children’s lives is helping children to make sustained progress after they first move in, regardless of the complexity of their needs and the challenges presented by their circumstances.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager has an accurate and detailed understanding of the progress each child is making and the priorities for their care. The registered manager and staff ensure that children are cared for in line with their agreed plans. They are quick to identify when children are struggling or may be at risk of serious harm and work with social workers to take decisive action. When a child was struggling to manage his feelings and control his behaviour living with other children, the registered manager Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 9 found a creative solution: she changed the use of the satellite house from preparing children for independence to providing intensive support for the child. He continues to be supported by the same people whom he already has strong relationships with, but in a less hectic environment more suited to his needs. It has been very positive for him with pleasing progress in managing his feelings and behaviour and he is doing well at his

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager and the staff have highly productive working relationships with the social workers, teachers, health workers and the police. They work together effectively to get positive outcomes for children. The registered manager and staff focus on doing what is in each child’s best interests. They assertively and successfully challenge local authorities when they see that children are not receiving the right support they need. This has included challenging the suitability of schools to meet the learning needs of individual children and raising concerns with senior social work managers about the planning for a child’s move to live with foster carers. A social worker said:

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

‘I am really impressed with the whole style of how they work and how they approach things in a very child-focused way. Everything they do is about the child and the child’s needs are always at the forefront of their minds. I have seen this especially with the difficulties [the child’s name] is having in school. Their focus is on what [the child’s name] needs.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager has a detailed understanding of the strengths of the home and the areas for development. An independent visitor provides rigorous and impartial scrutiny of the running of the home and how effectively children’s welfare is promoted and safeguarded. He talks to the children and social workers to help him to make judgements. The registered manager and her deputy manager’s detailed and informative reviews of the quality of care clearly evaluate how effectively they are applying the quality standards. This allows them to reflect on the success of the strategies that staff are using to support children. They take decisive action, based on their findings, to improve and maintain an exceedingly high standard of support that invariably meets children’s assessed needs and plans.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Comprehensive and reflective records build a detailed understanding of each child’s life. The records identify the help and support that children need and inform the plans for their future. However, end-of-placement reports do not always show in detail the child’s progress from their starting points and the impact of the quality of care provided on child’s experiences and outcomes. This information is valuable in helping the registered manager, staff and children to recognise the progress that has been made while the child has been living at the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager and her deputy manager are a highly efficient and supportive leadership team. Together, they have created the right environment for staff to provide vulnerable children with a high standard of care and consistency. They have high expectations for the staff’s professional conduct and practice. They provide staff with excellent advice, guidance and support that promotes strongly child-focused practice and staff’s confidence and professional development. Consequently, they have built a strong, Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 10 stable and cohesive team. Staff show a strong commitment to each child, compassion, perseverance and resilience. This is especially evident when children are experiencing difficulties.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager and her deputy manager provide staff with effective and regular practice-related supervision. It provides each member of staff with plenty of opportunities to reflect on their practice and the children’s progress, to discuss the emotional impact of their work and to have their performance thoroughly assessed. It would be beneficial, however, for managers to take into account the views of the children and other professionals about each member of staff when reviewing their performance.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager and her deputy manager ensure that people working at the home have the right experience, skills, values, personal qualities and motivation to work with vulnerable children. New staff go through a rigorous selection procedure and are carefully vetted before they start work. Children play a central role in the recruitment of staff. Their opinions are always taken into account when making a decision to offer a person the job. Children routinely interview people wishing to work at the home, devise questions and have a clear view about what they are looking for in people who support them.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The staffing arrangements ensure that there are sufficient knowledgeable, experienced, skilful and qualified staff available to meet all the children’s assessed needs. The highly motivated and competent members of staff clearly enjoy spending time with children and are keen to make a positive difference to their lives. Children are looked after by people they get to know well. They receive the continuity of care that helps them form strong attachments and positive relationships with the people caring for them each day. The staff team is very experienced and suitably qualified, with a number of staff qualified to the higher level 5 diploma in residential childcare. The managers actively encourage staff to continue to develop their skills and knowledge, through excellent training programmes tailored to the specific needs of the children, including in behaviour management, attachment theory, self-soothing and helping children to understand their

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

life story. The staff apply their learning to their practice and understand its impact on the children with whom they are working, for example how breathing and sensory techniques are helping children to manage their feelings safely. Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 11

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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: SC044276 12

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Hanover Buildings, 11-13 Hanover street, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 3DN

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Children’s home details

Responsible individual: Christopher Minogue

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Inspector

Nick Veysey, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC044276 13 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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