Essex – Q1 Wickford

Highcliffe Children's Centre, Rettondon View, Essex, SS11 8JE

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This inspection: Good 2

Previous inspection: Not applicable Access to services by young children and families Good 2 The quality of practice and services Good 2 The effectiveness of leadership, governance and management

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This children’s centre group is good because:

 The centre group is very much at the heart of the Wickford community and has been a key driver of the successful Essex Families Project and newly refurbished Community Café. Parents compared this latter project to a ‘DIY SOS’ television show, which has galvanised the whole community and prompted one parent to say ’it makes me proud to come from Wickford.’  Access to the centres is good. About three quarters of children under five and their families regularly use the centre which offers a wide range of activities and services which meets the needs of local families including targeted groups effectively. The quality and impact of services are good.  Strong partnerships with health professionals have helped to identify early signs of disability and children with special educational needs. All children have effectively been able to benefit from early interventions to support their learning and personal development.

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This children’s centre group is good because:

 The traveller community is actively using the ‘SOS YMCA Bus’ and outreach services and as a result, services are helping to improve the health and education of those families.  Nearly all teenage and young parents use both the ante-natal and post-natal services and baby groups. One newly arrived young mother said that: ’all my friends are those I met at the centre which has helped to give me a much better life.’  The centre buildings are attractive and well maintained with plenty of space and some excellent resources. The Highcliffe Centre is open for users as a safe haven and a place for welcoming those families who are not coping well and are seeking help.  Leadership and management are good and there is effective support from the management organisations and local authority. Together they are improving the quality of practice and services.

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It is not outstanding because:

 Tracking systems to measure the performance of the centre are still at an early stage and the collection, analysis and use of data to plan improvements are underdeveloped.  New local key performance indicators have not been included in the centre development plans.  A third of two-year-old children are not yet receiving their free pre-school education entitlement.  Adult learning does not cover basic literacy and numeracy and numbers attending courses are low.

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Information about this inspection

The inspection of this children’s centre group was carried out under Part 3A of the Childcare Act 2006 as amended by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. The centres that form part of this children’s centres group are Highcliffe Children’s Centre and The Triangle Children’s Centre

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Information about this inspection

This inspection was carried out by three Additional Inspectors

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Information about this inspection

The inspectors held meetings with the commissioned providers: The Pre-School Learning Alliance and Barnardo’s, representatives of the local authority, health partners, linked social worker, employment and other adult learning and training services groups, children centre staff, parents and members of the advisory board.

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Information about this inspection

The inspectors visited a range of activities and sessions held at the two centres, local outreach centres, local library and medical centre. The Pre-School Learning Alliance staff and senior centre staff attended all team meetings.

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Information about this inspection

They observed the centre’s work, and looked at a range of relevant documentation including self- evaluation form, action plan, a sample of case files, parents’ surveys, various policies and a variety of other assessment files for the range of activities and services delivered.

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Inspection team

Lead inspector Catherine Stormonth Additional inspector Lorraine Manford Additional inspector Peter Towner

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Information about the centre group

The Wickford Children’s Centre group in Wickford, Essex is run by the Pre-School Learning Alliance which is sub-contracted from Barnardo’s on behalf of the local authority. The group is made up of two centres: Highcliffe Children’s Centre and The Triangle Children’s Centre. The Pre-School Learning Alliance has been responsible for running these centres for the last two years. The centres were merged as part of a wider local re-structure plan to form a group in April 2014. The children’s centre service manager leads both centres and there is a single advisory board. The Highcliffe Children’s Centre was purpose built from a refurbished community centre and is the main service site with another delivery site based at The Triangle in the town centre, which offers 15 hours of service delivery each week.

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Information about the centre group

The group delivers services for children and families from both centres and from community venues, including Wickford Town Library, Wickford Health Centre, SOS YMCA Bus, North Crescent and Crays Hill Schools and Noak Bridge Village Hall. The centre group meets the core purpose by providing early education, childcare and health services, family support and adult learning and parenting courses. Most children enter early education with skills that are below the expected level for their age.

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Information about the centre group

The centres serve an area with mixed demographics with some affluent areas of private housing but also high levels of deprivation in some parts of Wickford North, Crouch, Castledon and Wickford Park. There are 2,040 children aged under five years living in the Wickford group reach area, the majority of whom are White British. The largest ethnic minority groups are from Eastern Europe and there are smaller numbers of Asian and African families. There are two Traveller sites in the reach area. Data shows that 12.3% of families are lone parents, 18.4% are in receipt of out of work benefits and 17.2% of families are from low-income households. Key target groups include: vulnerable families living in poverty, families where domestic violence is prevalent, lone parents, pregnant teenagers and young parents, families who are disabled or have additional needs and those families from ethnic communities including travellers.

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What does the centre/group need to do to improve further?

 Improve the use of data to measure performance and to set challenging targets for improvement making sure that:  the data about target group engagement is accurate  the new Essex key performance indicators and built into improvement planning  engagement and key performance data is provided to the advisory board to help the advisory board hold the centre to account  all schools’ Early Years Foundation Stage Profile data is known across all the key vulnerable groups of pupils to target and address areas of learning and personal development issues in the earliest learning at the centres.

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What does the centre/group need to do to improve further?

 Ensure most children receive their free pre-school early education entitlement

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What does the centre/group need to do to improve further?

 Ensure adult learning includes the basic skills of literacy and numeracy and participation rates are increased

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Access to services by young children and families Good

 Staff have excellent knowledge of the reach area and have been successful at increasing the number of families registered, including those expecting children. As a result, a large majority of targeted families, including the most vulnerable, are actively engaging with the centre and are benefiting from the well-matched services on offer.

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Access to services by young children and families Good

 Many families attend activities and services in large numbers from both within and outside the reach area. The centre engages effectively with the large majority of priority groups including lone parents, children living in low income and workless households and families from minority ethnic backgrounds, who all enjoy and significantly benefit from the services provided.

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Access to services by young children and families Good

 Outreach work is highly effective in establishing and maintaining contact with families in most need of intervention and in meeting their specific needs. These include those families living in more rural locations, many of whom are living in social isolation and less likely to use the centre.

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Access to services by young children and families Good

 The centre works effectively with the Essex Countywide Traveller Unit and has regular contact with traveller families using the community ‘SOS YMCA Bus’. The double decker bus visits the traveller site loaded with resources to help support and educate families and effectively gets children ready for school.

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Access to services by young children and families Good

 Two year health assessment checks have helped to identify children with a range of development delay and some children are referred to more specialist health services to support a range of disability including hearing and visual impairment, physical disability and more serious genetic syndromes in need of early intervention. The children who have speech delay are able to attend the ‘Chatterbox’ programme and speech and language therapist drop in sessions which have helped many children improve their communication skills.

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Access to services by young children and families Good

 The take up of the free entitlement to early education for two year olds is improving and about two thirds of children have been awarded places. Most pre-school settings are full so the centre has been working with local childminders and the local authority to urgently provide additional places for these children.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 There is a good range of both targeted and universal services, which are well matched to identified needs in the local area. The centre is particularly effective at contributing to good quality early childhood learning and improving parenting. Support for individual families is a real strength when the centres provide a welcoming environment to families in troubled times and practitioners work well with children and parents.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 The centre takes advantage of the nearby magnificent Memorial Park location for outdoor learning when encouraging healthy physical activities such as the buggy walks and ‘Tiny Trekkers’. A family fun day was very successful when more than 350 families came to the park.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 Overall children’s attainment at the end of Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is in broadly line with local and national levels. Inequalities are narrowing as the gap for the lowest attaining fifth of pupils is closing at the national rate. However, EYFS data from schools is not routinely shared with the children’s centre. The lack of EYFS data hampers the centres’ scope to plan to address any local early education issues amongst target groups.  Preparation for school is improving when the centre links up with local schools to provide specific school preparation sessions. The close links with the Crays Hill and Noak Bridge communities provide very effective support for the Traveller community and those rural families on the outskirts of the reach area. Preparation for school includes good advice for parents in improving their children’s personal, social and emotional development.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 Links with health services are good and individual families are provided with support to tackle obesity, help expectant mothers-to-be to stop smoking, improve dental health and increase immunisation rates. Sustained breastfeeding rates are below the national average despite some good efforts by the local breastfeeding support network to support and encourage new mothers.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 The centre works with the Billericay Parents Forum to deliver parenting classes including programmes on children’s safety. A parent provides a crèche to help make these courses possible. Completed SOUL (Soft Outcomes and Universal Learning) assessments show a range of positive outcomes and much better confidence and parent-child relationships as a result of attending these courses.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 Adult learners are signposted to a number of local providers. The number of parents taking up these opportunities however, is low and there are insufficient courses in basic skills such as literacy and numeracy.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 The Essex Families Project with additional support from Adult Community Learning team helps to organise volunteering and supports families and help them return to work. They set up a Friday Job Club at the centre and the number of volunteers recruited that helped build the Community Café is truly impressive. Many parents have been able to consider work in various building trades as a result and others will be working at the café when it opens next month.

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The quality of practice and services Good

 The centres monitors the take up of services and sustained family involvement but does not use evaluations and data sufficiently to measure the overall quality and impact of services.

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Good

 Leaders, managers and those responsible for governance of the centres have effectively driven improvements in access to services, the quality of provision and outcomes for families. The effective policies, practice and procedures promoted by the Pre-School Learning Alliance, are used consistently and contribute to the good management of the centres.

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Good

 The centre runs very smoothly under the inspirational and energetic leadership of the centre manager. Highly skilled and knowledgeable staff form a strong team devoted to helping families in most need. Staff are suitably qualified to deliver the range of activities and services and the arrangements for their continuous professional development are good. Resources are used very well to meet the needs of children and families. Community venues are used imaginatively to extend the remit of the centres and to provide good access to activities and services.

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Good

 The advisory board is made up from a range of key partners and local community groups with a broad range of skills and talents. When supplied with appropriate information, they hold the centres to account very effectively and financial management with the limited budget is a particular strength.

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Good

 There are two aspects of local authority support that require improvement. The new local key performance indicators (KPIs) have not been implemented yet and the centre is using out of date KPIs in action planning. The last annual conversation with the centre was poorly written and did not use robust data to set and agree on performance and outcome measures to reduce inequalities and improve the lives of the targeted groups. Advisory board members stated that they found the last report difficult to understand and could not challenge the content.

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Good

 The monitoring of the centres’ performance is underdeveloped. Although all activities are evaluated there is no systematic approach to gathering this information and analysing it to ensure the centre continues to improve.

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Good

 The safety and welfare of families underpin the centres’ work and staff have a good understanding about how to protect children. Staff successfully contribute to reducing harm to children, particularly those that are subject to child protection plans and children in need. Links with all relevant agencies are good and Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences are attended for those families most at risk and looked after children. Staff use assessment processes well to determine the needs of families and coordinate timely multi-agency support. All statutory safeguarding requirements are well met and staff are safely recruited.

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Good

 Families make a good contribution to shaping services and feel that their voice is effectively heard through Parent Forums, very successful coffee mornings and through their parent representatives serving on the advisory board.

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Grade Judgement Description

Grade 1 Outstanding Practice consistently reflects the highest aspirations for children and their families and as a result inequalities are reducing rapidly and gaps are closing. Grade 2 Good Practice enables most children and their families to access good quality services that improve children’s wellbeing and achieve the stated outcomes for families. Grade 3 Requires improvement Performance is not as good as it might reasonably be expected to be in one or more key areas. Grade 4 Inadequate The needs of children and families in its area are not being met and/or the leaders and managers are not providing sufficient challenge to bring about improvement to the quality of services.

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Children’s Centre Group details

Unique reference number 80703 Local authority Essex Inspection number 442838 Managed by The Pre-School Learning Alliance and Barnardo’s on behalf of the local authority

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five in the reach area

Centre leader Kasey Brazier Date of previous inspection N/A Telephone number 01268 763712 Email address kasey.brazier@pre-school.org.uk

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This group consists of the following children’s centres:

 URN 20203 The Triangle Children’s Centre  URN 20202 Highcliffe Children’s Centre guidance ‘raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.ofsted.gov.uk . If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300 123 4234 , or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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This group consists of the following children’s centres:

(Ofsted) regulates and inspects to 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 Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work-based learning and skills training, 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. Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the Education Act 2005, the school must provide a copy of this report free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied. If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille,

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This group consists of the following children’s centres:

please telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk . You may copy all or parts of this document for non-commercial educational purposes, as long as you give details of the source and date of publication and do not alter the information in any way. To receive regular email alerts about new publications, including survey reports and school inspection reports, please visit our website and go to ‘Subscribe’.

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This group consists of the following children’s centres:

T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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