Children's Home run by Cambian Childcare Limited in Cambridgeshire

Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 1 Registered provider: Cambian Childcare Ltd

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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 home is registered for up to 16 children who have ongoing mental health needs and challenging behaviours that may prevent them from functioning within the community without continued support. It is privately owned, and has a separately registered school on site. The registered manager left at the end of March 2018. A new manager has been appointed and is in the process of applying to Ofsted to be registered.

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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

Overall judgement at last inspection: requires improvement to be good

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Enforcement action since last inspection:

On 28 November 2017, an inspector carried out a monitoring inspection of the home. This visit found that there was a high use of agency staff and that the staff in general had low levels of experience and qualification. In addition, there were issues with the accommodation due to significant damage being caused by children; doors were being locked to maintain control; and monitoring was not effective. Ofsted served a Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 2 compliance notice and a restriction of accommodation.

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Enforcement action since last inspection:

A further monitoring inspection was carried out on 9 January 2018. Although there had been some improvement, this was very limited. The compliance notice was reissued and the restriction of accommodation remained in place.

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Enforcement action since last inspection:

A further monitoring inspection was carried out on 21 February 2018. This visit found that the registered manager had failed to implement the home’s safeguarding policy following concerns about the staff’s practice. There was a lack of action, guidance and strategies following some other incidents at the home. Ofsted issued a further restriction of accommodation from 1 March 2018 to 23 May 2018.

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Enforcement action since last inspection:

A further monitoring inspection was carried out on 6 March 2018. This visit found that the compliance notice had been met, and that there were sufficient improvements to lift the restriction of accommodation.

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

26/07/2017 Full Requires improvement to be good Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 3

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Statutory requirements

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

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Requirement Due date

The positive relationships standard is that children are helped to develop, and to benefit from, relationships based on—

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Requirement Due date

an understanding about acceptable behaviour; and

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Requirement Due date

positive responses to other children and adults.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure— that staff—

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Requirement Due date

meet each child’s behavioural and emotional needs, as set out in the child’s relevant plans;

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Requirement Due date

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. (Regulation 11 (1)(a)(b)(c)(2)(a)(i)(x))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, this relates to ensuring that support is always provided to children when they need or ask for it and helping staff and children to find ways of reducing the frequency and duration of physical interventions. 31/07/2018

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Requirement Due date

The protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure— that staff—

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Requirement Due date

assess whether each child is at risk of harm, taking into account information in the child’s relevant plans, and, if necessary, make arrangements to reduce the risk of any harm to the child. (Regulation 12 (1)(2)(a)(i)) 31/07/2018 Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 4 In particular, this relates to ensuring that children’s risk assessments include all areas of identified risk. The leadership and management standard is that the registered person enables, inspires and leads a culture in relation to the children’s home that—

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Requirement Due date

helps children aspire to fulfil their potential; and

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Requirement Due date

In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to—

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Requirement Due date

use monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b)(2)(h)) 31/07/2018

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Requirement Due date

The leadership and management standard is that the registered person enables, inspires and leads a culture in relation to the children’s home that—

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Requirement Due date

helps children aspire to fulfil their potential; and

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Requirement Due date

In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to—

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Requirement Due date

ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child. (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b)(2)(c)) 31/07/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must recruit staff using recruitment procedures that are designed to ensure children’s safety.

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Requirement Due date

employ an individual to work at the children’s home; or

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Requirement Due date

if an individual is employed by a person other than the registered person to work at the home in a position in which the individual may have regular contact with children, allow that individual to work at the home, if the individual satisfies the requirements in paragraph (3).

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Requirement Due date

full and satisfactory information is available in relation to the individual in respect of each of the matters in Schedule 2. 31/07/2018 Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 5 (Regulation 32 (1)(2)(a)(b)(3)(d)) The registered person must ensure that all employees—

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Requirement Due date

receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience. (Regulation 33 (4)(b)) 31/07/2018

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Requirement Due date

Subject to paragraph (6), the registered person must establish a procedure for considering complaints made by or on behalf of children.

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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 (1)(3)) 31/07/2018

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Recommendations

 Staff should keep and encourage children to keep appropriate memorabilia of the time spent living at the home and help them record significant life events. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.5)

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improvement to be good

The home has been through a prolonged unsettled period since the last full inspection. This is settling down and several children are making good progress. The judgements for the other sections of this report have had an impact on the judgement of the overall experiences and progress of children, and have limited it to requires improvement to be good.

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improvement to be good

There has been a high turnover of staff. This has slowed down, so children can and do now build relationships with a more consistent staff team. A placing social worker said that their child ‘has settled well and developed good relationships at the home’.

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improvement to be good

Some children have not received the support that they wanted when they wanted it. One child had raised this as a low-level complaint [grumble]. Another child spoke to an inspector about staff not taking her seriously when she said that she was ‘not OK’. There are some good relationships between the staff and children. However, failing to consistently provide support when the children feel that they need it does not meet their needs.

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improvement to be good

The managers and staff are listening to the children’s views more, including during community meetings. The children asked for a sensory garden and managers have plans to provide this. Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 6 Some children are making good progress in their education, but others can still find it hard to engage due to their emotional needs. A social worker said that the education arrangements cater to her child’s needs, and that the child is achieving for the first time in a long time. Helping the children to engage in education as much as they are able will help them to achieve more and prepare for further education or employment.

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improvement to be good

The children get opportunities to engage in a wide range of activities as a group and as individuals. These include:

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improvement to be good

 horse riding  volunteering with St John Ambulance  trips out with staff  working with therapy dogs  someone bringing guinea pigs into the home  reflexology

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improvement to be good

These activities help the children to pursue their individual interests, develop their self- esteem, and have fun and enjoy themselves. One child spoke about how much the work with dogs had helped her.

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improvement to be good

The way in which staff use risk assessments is not consistently helping to safeguard the children and reduce their level of risk. Although the risk assessments are written clearly and specify ways of reducing the identified risks, some significant areas of risk have not been included in some children’s risk assessments. These risks include a child having unsupervised access to social media and receiving inappropriate sexual requests, and a relationship between two children at the home.

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improvement to be good

There is a significantly high level of physical intervention. Many of the interventions are carried out to prevent the children from harming themselves. The records of these incidents include debriefings of staff and children, but these debriefings do not always help the staff to reflect on their practice. As a result, the managers and staff are not finding effective ways of reducing the frequency or duration of the times when they are physically holding the children. This is in the context of the staff dealing with more incidents themselves, and making significantly fewer calls to the police to request help with managing behaviour. Because the staff are dealing with behaviour themselves, this has reduced the chances of the children becoming unnecessarily criminalised.

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improvement to be good

Recruitment checks are carried out for prospective staff. However, in one case, a gap in the applicant’s employment history was not followed up and no explanation was sought. This can limit the effectiveness of the recruitment process in protecting children from contact with unsuitable adults. Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 7 The staff take bullying seriously and have reduced it effectively. There have been a high number of bullying incidents. However, since a workshop took place for children in April 2018, this has reduced significantly. The action taken helps to protect the children from bullying.

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improvement to be good

There are very few incidents of the children going missing from care. When this has happened, the staff have followed the children, reported them as missing and tried to keep them safe and encourage them to return. These actions have helped to reduce the risk to the children who have gone missing.

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

The previous assistant manager has been appointed as manager. She is suitably qualified for the role and is beginning to have a positive impact. There has been an improvement in the effectiveness of monitoring at the home, but it is not yet at a good enough standard. The manager has put processes in place to help her monitor the quality of care, but these have not identified the issues referred to in this report. A lack of effective monitoring limits improvement to the quality of care provided for the children.

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

The frequency of the supervision of staff has improved, but is still not at a suitable level. For example, one member of staff is on a performance plan which requires her to have fortnightly supervision, but this has not been happening. Supervision is particularly important as the staff team is still relatively inexperienced and unqualified. Several staff are working towards a relevant level 3 qualification. None of the permanent support staff have this qualification at present.

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

When staff complete their probationary period, managers record this on the member of staff’s supervision records. However, there is no clear evaluative assessment recorded of their suitability to move from probation to work with the children. This can lead to staff working with children before they are ready, or without additional support that could help them to provide good levels of care for the children.

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

The children are able to make complaints. However, not all records of complaints show the details of the investigation undertaken in order to reach a decision. In addition, the children are not always told about the outcome to their complaint. This does not ensure that the children feel listened to, or that robust investigations are undertaken.

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

Staff do not encourage and support all of the children to keep memorabilia of their time at the home. This is particularly important for some children who have lived at the home for a long time. Consequently, the home fails to make sure that all children have memories of significant events and the progress that they have made, to take with them when they leave.

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

The managers have a good level of knowledge and understanding of the children. They Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 8 keep up to date with their progress and needs through weekly reports and regular clinical meetings. This helps managers to provide a better level of individualised care for the children.

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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: 1257796 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Cambian Childcare Ltd

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Cambian, Waterfront, Hammersmith Embankment, Chancellors Road, London W6 9RU

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Inspectors

Clive Lucas: social care inspector Natalie Burton: social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: 1257796 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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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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