Children's home run by The Caldecott Foundation Limited in Ashford

Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 1 SC037327 Registered provider: The Caldecott Organisation

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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 service is a children’s home providing care and accommodation for up to eight children who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The home is run by a registered charity.

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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

Date of last inspection: 5 September 2016

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outstanding

Overall judgement at last inspection: outstanding

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outstanding

Enforcement action since last inspection: none

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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

 Leaders and managers are inspirational, passionate and forward-thinking. Their monitoring is regular and robust and they are reflective in their approach to Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 2 issues that arise in order to improve practice. They work collaboratively to support children to achieve positive outcomes.  Staff are similarly passionate and committed to improving the lives of the children they work with. They are well supported by regular supervision, excellent induction and access to high-quality training.  Children receive high-quality individualised care. Children’s health, educational and emotional needs are well met and they thrive in this home.  Children experience long-term placements and build up loving and close relationships with staff. This helps them to make good, and in some cases exceptional progress. This is particularly significant as the presenting needs of children are considerably complex.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Staff establish excellent working relationships with children’s families and seek to encourage positive contact, and a return home if possible.  Children experience an excellent balance of nurture, care and control, helping them to feel valued, loved and to understand right from wrong.  Excellent matching of children’s compatibility creates a safe and stable home environment. Transitions in and out of the home are extremely well managed and thorough.  The manager and staff place a high priority on keeping children safe. Staff have a good understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and they adopt a multi- agency approach to ensuring that children are helped and protected.

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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

 This inspection identified that some children experience a higher level of physical intervention. Leaders and managers had already identified this and a senior instructor in physical restraint is completing an overview of all physical interventions. This inspection endorses this development, although no formal recommendation has been made.  External monitoring reports meet the requirements of the regulations; however, their layout is complicated and confusing. This inspection endorses the leaders and managers’ views that these reports would be more helpful if they were more analytical. No formal recommendation is made, as this issue has already been raised during a staff developmental day and actions are under way to address this shortfall.  The children’s guide to the home meets the requirements of regulation; however, the staff are currently working with children to design a simplified version for the younger age range.

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Key findings from this inspection

Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 3

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

29/03/2017 05/09/2016 Interim Full Declined effectiveness Outstanding 28/01/2016 Interim Improved effectiveness 26/08/2015 Full Good Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 4

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children receive excellent individualised care. They are able to build trusting and secure relationships with staff, which is evident from key-working sessions, debriefings, observations and professionals’ views. Children present as relaxed and happy within the home. Observations of staff caring for children during the inspection showed loving and close relationships. Staff are committed and caring, and genuine love for children shows through.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children make good progress and some children make exceptional progress. Some small steps are of great significance, given the children’s complex needs. Behaviours resulting from past trauma are complex and often children will make progress, but then relapse. Staff receive excellent training to help them to understand these behaviours and this process. Careful assessment, comprehensive treatment plans and a range of resources support children to make progress. Examples of resources are a school on site, with specialist teaching staff who understand trauma and attachment behaviours, play therapists and a range of educational and clinical psychologists. There is also access to external resources if required, for example psychiatric assessment or treatment plans. Children have made progress in a number of areas, such as attending therapy, improving relationships, managing contact with their families, building up confidence and

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

making progress in, or returning to education, after substantial absence.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children feel safe and are listened to. This is evident in case records and minutes of young people’s meetings, observations and key-work sessions. Staff are readily available to children. In addition, children have access to advocates and independent visitors.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

A very stable and committed staff team provides children with consistent and high- quality care. Children are helped to manage powerful emotions and self-regulate strong feelings, and are supported with clear and consistent messages about acceptable behaviours. Children receive clear guidance if behaviour is unacceptable and this helps them to understand and learn right from wrong. Sanctions and consequences support positive behaviours and reparation is used in a positive way to avoid criminalising children.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children are allowed to be children; many observations of them with staff showed ordinary parent/child interactions, sitting together to eat or watch the television, being given support with homework and help in managing strong emotions. Even older children were observed to lie on the sofa, with staff sitting and reading to them or watching a film or playing a game together.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Transitions are managed extremely well. The process for admission is thorough; even in an emergency, the staff visit a child prior to their admission. This process ensures that staff understand the child and their individual needs prior to them coming to the home. When children arrive, they receive a guide to the children’s home. This guide includes comprehensive information in an understandable and accessible format. The home is Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 5 working with children to produce a guide that is even more accessible for younger children.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Occasionally, assessments determine that children have higher-level needs, such as psychiatric or more specialised needs, that cannot be met at the home. In these cases, the staff work with placing authorities to facilitate moves in a careful and planned way. Alternative suggestions and treatment plans are proposed that are in children’s best interests. Careful planning for transitions in these cases ensures that children and placing authorities are prepared and children have a positive move. It is not unusual for children to stay at the home for a long time; some of the children at the home had been there for six years or more. There are low levels of placement breakdowns, and when children move on it is mostly for positive reasons, such as moving to foster care, returning home or to independent living.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: outstanding

Children experience a range of activities while living at the home. They regularly engage in activities in the community and are involved in after-school clubs, local sports clubs, dancing and ice-skating. The children regularly visit the cinema, eat out or visit the library or other local community resources. The staff take the children on a camping holiday every year, which is at an outdoor pursuits centre, which encourages teamwork and building skills for the future. In addition, children also go on a separate break to a holiday park.

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

The leaders and managers in this organisation understand the importance of clearly identifying risk prior to children’s admission to the home. They are exceptionally careful in ensuring that all risks have been considered and an in-depth assessment begins before admission. This approach to risk assessment continues throughout the children’s stay in the home. Effective arrangements are in place to assess the compatibility of children moving into the home with those already living there. This careful approach helps to reduce the risk of inappropriate placements and unnecessary risks of placements breaking down quickly.

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

Children do not usually go missing from this home. There has only been one incident in the past three years when a child went missing. A clearly designed and personalised flow chart for each child provides staff with guidance on the correct process and procedure to follow for that particular child if they should go missing. Leaders and managers have well-established links with the local safeguarding children’s board and the Prevent and Channel strategic manager for the host local authority. These two resources offer training and consultation for staff on all safeguarding and exploitation issues, including risk of radicalisation and going missing from care. One safeguarding partner stated, ‘The organisation is working in partnership and is very interactive.’

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

Staff manage behaviour consistently. They work very well together as a team, ensuring that information is shared quickly and confidentially. This excellent sharing prevents any splitting or manipulation of staff and ensures that children continue to receive the same messages. This helps children to feel safe and supported. One social worker stated, Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 6 ‘They work really well as a team and offer a consistent response.’ Restraints and physical interventions have been frequent. Records reviewed during the inspection showed excellent and consistent reporting of incidents. All restraints were considered appropriate and recording quality is excellent and exceeds regulation. The complexity of children’s needs contributes in part to the higher levels of intervention, but it also indicates that staff take a proactive approach to challenge children’s unwanted behaviours and prevent

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

escalation of incidents. The leaders and managers are aware of the high levels of restraint and already have a process in place to monitor and review practice and think about behaviour management planning for each individual child.

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

Safeguarding processes have had a major overhaul and upgrade since a requirement was made at the last interim inspection in March 2017. New safeguarding arrangements and processes are in place, which are robust and effective. For example, the registered manager, deputy manager or senior worker on shift reads the records of all key-working sessions between staff and children to ensure that nothing is missed. In addition, the quality assurance team, through a monthly audit, reviews all child protection incidents. Records of recent safeguarding incidents showed clear, concise and helpful records, leaving no doubt as to what action had been taken, when and by whom.

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

The organisation has reviewed and updated all of its policies and procedures. This comprehensive review is impressive and all documents are available on the website. The policies are clear and helpfully link where processes overlap, for example between restraint, safeguarding incidents and behaviour management policy. This policy database is an excellent reference tool and provides guidance for staff and the wider network working with the organisation.

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

Managers ensure that safe recruitment checks are undertaken when employing new staff members. Managers verify references and ensure that all basic checks are completed prior to new staff starting work. This helps ensure that unsuitable adults do not work at the home or have unsupervised contact with children. Excellent induction arrangements provide a thorough introduction to the concept of the organisation, its model of intervention, principles and values and other modules in therapeutic residential care.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Leaders and managers have a very high ambition for children and support staff to be effective in providing high levels of individualised care and to help children achieve. Leaders and managers advocate strongly on behalf of children to ensure that individual treatment and care plans are provided to ensure that children’s needs are met, for example calling a review, requesting a specialist assessment or resource.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Leaders and managers know the children well. They are very involved in the care planning, reviewing and day-to-day arrangements for children. Managers have regular contact with young people, and are present and accessible within the home. Observations of leaders and managers with children showed familiar, warm and appropriate relationships with them. Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 7 Leaders and managers offer an exceptionally supportive environment for staff. The organisation is a learning environment. There is fantastic support for staff to ensure that they have all the support and training to undertake their roles. Staff have access to therapeutic practice workshops, supervision, appraisal and ongoing training. Staff feel well prepared for their role at work. One member of staff said, ‘The induction process is brilliant: there is a video, routines, daily rotas, explaining the challenges. It’s a good

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

reality check, so you know what it’s like before you walk through the door.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

All staff access therapeutic practice workshops, which complement the model of care that the organisation has adopted. Staff also receive ongoing mandatory training, which includes the level 3 diploma for residential childcare, safeguarding and other essential training.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The organisation provides excellent learning and development opportunities for new or developing managers. All of the senior workers are supported to undertake the level 5 diploma in leadership and management and the organisation is working with a local university to develop a foundation diploma in management and leadership of a therapeutic environment. The registered manager is suitably qualified and is undertaking further study to extend her skills further.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Leaders and managers know their service well and identify strengths and build on these. They also understand areas for development and continuously seek to improve. For example, the management team is already developing three areas, which were identified for improvement during the inspection, and hence no further recommendations are required.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The home is meeting its stated aims and objectives and going beyond this to improve practice and ultimately to improve outcomes for children.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

An independent visitor regularly monitors practice in the home and reports directly to Ofsted. The reports do offer some challenge to leaders and managers to improve services. However, they lack sufficient analysis about young people’s safety and protection and their layout is somewhat confusing. The leaders and managers had already identified this as an area for development and had made suggested changes to the template that the independent visitor uses, which they feel will help them to improve practice.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Leaders and managers are inclusive. The diversity of staff does not always reflect the diversity of children looked after. Leaders and managers are aware of this and are thoughtful in promoting and supporting equality and diversity needs well. For example, sourcing an ethnically matched independent visitor for a child and ensuring that dietary/menu requirements are met and celebrating/learning about various different religious and cultural festivals. Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 8

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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: SC037327 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: The Caldecott Organisation

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Caldecott House, Smeeth, Ashford TN25 6SP

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Children’s home details

Responsible individual: Nicholas Barnett

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Inspector

Christine Kennet, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC037327 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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