Children's home run by Oxfordshire County Council

Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 1 SC033896 Registered provider: Oxfordshire County 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 children’s home is registered to accommodate up to six young people, and it currently only admits boys. The home is registered to care for young people who may have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties.

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Information about this children’s home

Inspection dates: 6 to 7 November and 14 to 15 November 2017

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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requires improvement to be good

How well children and young people are helped and protected requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

The children’s home is not yet delivering good help and care for children and young people. However, there are no serious or widespread failures that result in their welfare not being safeguarded or promoted.

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requires improvement to be good

Date of last inspection: 22 February 2017

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requires improvement to be good

Overall judgement at last inspection: improved effectiveness

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Key findings from this inspection

This children’s home requires improvement to be good because:

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Key findings from this inspection

 More recently, a lack of care in the admission of children to the home has led to Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 2 staff being unable to care for the children effectively.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Staff have failed to support children who have been recently placed to develop positive relationships with them.

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Key findings from this inspection

 The lack of positive relationships between the children and staff has led to the friendships that children have developed with each other being rebellious in nature.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Staff have been unable to support children recently placed to develop an understanding about acceptable responses to the frustrations they face, and about how their pasts have affected their behaviour. Children need to be helped to develop the skills required to manage their behaviour more effectively, and to gain an understanding about what constitutes a healthy relationship.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Children have not felt that they have been listened to, and have resorted to expressing their views through poor behaviour.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Significant increases in the number of missing-from-care incidents mean that children are putting themselves at risk on a regular basis.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Prohibited financial sanctions have been used when children have been rude or abusive, or have left the home without permission. .  The procedure for dealing with complaints is not always used when members of the local community have raised concerns with the staff or the manager. This means that opportunities to monitor and learn lessons from complaints are not always taken up.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Not all serious incidents have been notified to Ofsted.

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Key findings from this inspection

 The arrangements for monitoring the work of the staff have failed to identify some significant shortfalls.

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Key findings from this inspection

 In some areas, the statement of purpose is aspirational and unrealistic about the range of needs that the staff are likely to be able to cater for.

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Key findings from this inspection

 Children who were due to move on from the home developed good, constructive relationships with staff, and made good progress in many areas of their lives.

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 3 22/02/2017 Interim Improved effectiveness 21/09/2016 Full Good 30/03/2016 Interim Improved effectiveness 21/07/2015 Full Good Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 4

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Statutory requirements

This section sets out the actions that the registered person(s) must take to meet the Care Standards Act 2000, Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and the ‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’. The registered person(s) must comply within the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that a record is made of any complaint, the action taken in response, and the outcome of any investigation. (Regulation 39 (3)) 28/03/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must notify HMCI and each other relevant person without delay if there is an allegation of abuse against the home or a person working there. (Regulation 40 (4)(c)) 28/03/2018

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Requirement Due date

The following measures may not be used to discipline any child: imposing a financial penalty, other than a requirement for the payment of a reasonable sum (which may be by instalments) by way of reparation. (Regulation 19 (2)(f)) 28/03/2018

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Requirement Due date

In order to meet the children’s views, wishes and feelings standard the registered person must ensure that:

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Requirement Due date

(1) children receive care from staff who - (a) develop positive relationships with them; (b) engage with them; and (c) take their views, wishes and feelings into account in relation to matters affecting the children’s care and welfare and their lives. (Regulation 7 (1)(a)(b)(c) 28/03/2018

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Requirement Due date

The leadership and management standard requires the registered person to use the monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements to the quality of care provided in the home. (Regulation 13 (2)(h)) 28/03/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must keep the statement of purpose under review and, where appropriate, revise it. (Regulation 16 (3)(a)) 28/03/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that children are admitted to the home only if their needs are within the range of needs of children for whom it is intended that the home is to provide care and accommodation, as set out in the home’s statement of purpose. (Regulation 14 (2)(a)) 28/03/2018 Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 5 The positive relationships standard is that children are helped to develop, and to benefit from, relationships based on— (a) mutual respect and trust; (b) an understanding about acceptable behaviour; and (c) positive responses to other children and adults. (2) In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure— (a) that staff— (i) meet each child’s behavioural and emotional needs, as set out in the child’s relevant plans; (ii) help each child to develop socially aware behaviour; (iii) encourage each child to take responsibility for the child’s behaviour, in accordance with the child’s age

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Requirement Due date

and understanding; (iv) help each child to develop and practise skills to resolve conflicts positively and without harm to anyone; (v) communicate to each child expectations about the child’s behaviour and ensure that the child understands those expectations in accordance with the child’s age and understanding; (vi) help each child to understand, in a way that is appropriate according to the child’s age and understanding, personal, sexual and social relationships, and how those relationships can be supportive or harmful; (vii) help each child to develop the understanding and skills to recognise or withdraw from a damaging, exploitative or harmful relationship; (viii) strive to gain each child’s respect and trust; (ix) understand how children’s previous experiences and present emotions can be communicated through behaviour and have the competence and skills to interpret these and develop positive relationships

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Requirement Due date

with children; (x) are provided with supervision and support to enable them to understand and manage their own feelings and responses to the behaviour and emotions of children, and to help children to do the same; (xi) de-escalate confrontations with or between children, or potentially violent behaviour by children; 28/03/2018 Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 6 (xii) understand and communicate to children that bullying is unacceptable; and (xiii) have the skills to recognise incidents or indications of bullying and how to deal with them; and (b) that each child is encouraged to build and maintain positive relationships with others. (Regulation 11(1)(a)(b)(c) (2)(i)-(xiii) (b)) The protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe. (2) In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure – (a) that staff – (i) assess whether each child is at risk of harm, taking

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Requirement Due date

into account information in the child’s relevant plans, and, if necessary, make arrangements to reduce the risk of any harm to the child; (vi) take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare. (Regulation 12(1) (2)(a)(i)(vi)) 28/03/2018

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Recommendations

 Appropriate forms of contact should be promoted and facilitated for each child, including where appropriate visits to the child in the home; visits by the child to relatives and/or friends; letters, emails and texts; use of social media and other forms of contact via the internet. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations, including the quality standards’, page 58, paragraph 11.18)

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Recommendations

 When a child returns to the home after being missing from care or away from the home without permission, the responsible local authority must provide an opportunity for the child to have an independent return home interview. Homes should take account of information provided by such interviews when assessing risks and putting arrangements in place to protect each child. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations, including the quality standards’, page 45, paragraph 9.30)

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improvement to be good

The quality of the overall experiences and progress for children who have lived in the Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 7 home since the last inspection has been variable. Children who have moved into the home more recently have not had a good quality experience, and they have made little or no progress.

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improvement to be good

At the point of their admission, the safety of the new cohort of children was prioritised over their compatibility with other children already living in the home. Consequently, children have moved in in quick succession. Staff have had only limited information about their needs, and there have been no strategies developed to limit the impact of areas of incompatibility. These shortfalls have inhibited good care planning and have prevented the registered manager from making well-informed decisions about who moves in and when.

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improvement to be good

The staff team has struggled to maintain appropriate boundaries, structure and routines for the children. Consequently, the children have quickly developed a sense of having more control than their age and abilities are able to cope with. These children have been able to make poor choices and decisions, which adversely affect their health and longer- term outcomes. For example, staff have failed to challenge, successfully, the children’s choice to smoke; one child has taken up smoking since moving in. There is a lack of passion and drive from the staff to appropriately push, challenge or encourage the children to engage in education. Children’s learning and future life chances are being adversely affected by this.

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improvement to be good

There was a lack of attention to arranging for a child, who had lived in the home for over a week, to meet or have any other form of contact with his mother. This shortfall did not support the child and his mother to maintain or develop their relationship during a difficult period in their lives. It caused the child and his mother a level of uncertainty and potentially some distress.

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improvement to be good

Since the last inspection, older children who were settled and had lived in the home for a long time made some good progress and have successfully moved on. Staff spent good quality time with these children, and helped them grow and develop into well-rounded young adults. For example, one young person was supported to explore his sexual identity. His choices were valued and celebrated by staff. A commendable piece of work was carried out in supporting two young asylum seekers who had travelled to the UK from their country of origin together. On arrival in the UK, they had become separated from each other. They found each other over a social networking site, and staff supported them to re-establish their friendship. Staff took emergency action that saved the life of another young person who had made a serious attempt at taking his life.

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improvement to be good

These older children engaged well in the opportunities available to them. They took part in interesting and stimulating activities such as go-karting, fishing and skydiving. Staff devised a memory photo book for each of these children, and their books were presented to them when they left. These will help them remember their time in the home and the progress they made while there.

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improvement to be good

These older children experienced a cohesive and successful approach in delivering on their care plans, and built strong and trusting relationships with the staff working with Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 8 them.

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improvement to be good

During this inspection, children made a number of allegations to an inspector about the staff, and the care that they receive. These included not feeling listened to, their concerns not being taken seriously and not feeling safe. Senior managers swiftly responded and instigated an investigation, in consultation with the local authority designated officer. Consequently, this inspection was halted and reconvened at an appropriate time. On the final day of this inspection, the investigation was near completion but was not fully concluded.

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improvement to be good

Over the past months, staff have struggled to support children to manage their behaviour effectively. There has been a lack of clear and effective boundaries and routines in the home, and this has resulted in the children being bored. As children have become bored, with little direction and guidance offered to them, they have taken part in risky pastimes such as offending, drug use and being missing.

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improvement to be good

Police reported concerns about anti-social behaviour and incidents of violence and aggression towards staff. Police also highlighted that staff have failed to prevent a significant increase in the number of missing incidents. While staff follow protocols to support an early return home for children, there has been a lack of challenge to the local authority regarding the failure to offer children return home interviews. Staff do attempt to talk to the children on their return home but generally, due to the poor quality relationships, children refuse to talk to staff about their reasons for being missing. This means that opportunities to explore reasons why children run away, and to discuss with them what would help prevent them being missing, are missed.

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improvement to be good

Staff have withheld children’s pocket money for being rude and abusive, or leaving the site without permission; this is not a permitted form of sanction and has not helped to improve children’s behaviour.

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improvement to be good

When issues are raised by neighbours these are not always dealt with as complaints. This practice is not consistent with the organisation’s procedures. This means that opportunities to monitor and learn lessons from complaints are not always taken up. A number of allegations have been made about staff. These have been fully investigated, but staff have been left feeling afraid to challenge the children. The local authority designated officer for safeguarding reported good working relationships with the manager. She has confidence in his ability to manage allegations effectively, and spoke about internal investigations being clear, factual, detailed and thorough. While allegations are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly, two allegations were not notified to Ofsted. This meant that the regulator was unable to ensure that the issues were dealt with effectively.

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improvement to be good

The older children who were well settled in the home and had developed trusting Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 9 relationships with staff learned to develop the skills they need to function as valuable members of the community. They developed their ability to cope with frustrations in an appropriate way and learned to take responsibility for their actions.

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

There is a statement of purpose that sets out what the home tries to provide. The statement is aspirational in part, and is unrealistic about the range of needs addressed and services that staff are likely to be able to provide to a high enough standard.

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

A suitably qualified and experienced registered manager leads the home. The manager is respected by his staff team. The recent poor arrangements for the admission of new children to the home have led to children being, in the main, beyond the control of the manager and staff. Despite the manager’s best efforts, situations have escalated beyond his control and children are gaining little from their time in the home.

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

The management monitoring arrangements are ineffective. There is an over-reliance on staff inputting data and information and keeping it up to date. This has led to mistakes in data collection and errors in data analysis. For example, the data on missing episodes was not consistent with the police records.

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

Staff team members are committed to the children. However, with the arrival of the new cohort of children, they have become exhausted. They feel let down and unsupported by senior managers, and staff morale is low. Some staff said that they had got used to a group of older children who had moved through their difficult times, and were far less challenging towards the end of their time at the home. Consequently, they felt unprepared or unready to start this process again with a new group of children. Staff have currently lost confidence in their abilities, and the quality of the care they provide has been badly impacted.

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

Working relationships with other agencies, such as the police, are becoming strained because staff are currently unable to defuse situations. Staff are using the police to deal with issues that they should have been able to defuse effectively on their own.

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

Children’s anti-social and unacceptable behaviour has caused a strain on the home’s standing in the local community, which had once been positive. There is concern that the bad feeling that some members of the local community currently have about the home and children living there will lead to children being scapegoated for all of the local area’s anti-social behaviour into the future. Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 10

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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, 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: SC033896 11

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Oxfordshire County Council

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: County Hall, New Road, Oxford OX1 1ND

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Inspector(s)

Amanda Harvey, social care inspector Rosie Dancer, social care inspector Sophie Wood, regulatory inspection manager Inspection report children’s home: SC033896 12 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 looked after children, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspector(s)

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Inspector(s)

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Inspector(s)

T: 0300 123 1231 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: http://www.gov.uk/ofsted

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