Children's home run by Aurora Care Young People’s Services

Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 1 Registered provider: Aurora Care Young Peoples Services

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Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

The home is registered to provide care for up to four young people who have social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. There were three young people in the placement at the time of the inspection. The home is part of a private organisation.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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inadequate

How well children and young people are helped and protected inadequate

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inadequate

The effectiveness of leaders and managers inadequate

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inadequate

There are serious and widespread failures that mean children and young people are not protected or their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded, and the care and experiences of children and young people are poor, and they are not making progress.

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inadequate

Overall judgement at last inspection: Requires improvement to be good

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: None Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

06/03/2018 Full Requires improvement to be good 18/01/2018 Full Inadequate Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 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

In meeting the quality standards, the registered person must, and must ensure that staff—

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Requirement Due date

if the registered person considers, or staff consider, a placing authority’s or a relevant person’s performance or response to be inadequate in relation to their role, challenge the placing authority or the relevant person to seek to ensure that each child’s needs are met in accordance with the child’s relevant plans. (Regulation 5(c)) 02/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

The children’s views, wishes and feelings standard is that children receive care from staff who—

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Requirement Due date

develop positive relationships with them;

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Requirement Due date

take their views, wishes and feelings into account in relation to matters affecting the children’s care and welfare and their lives.

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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 an explanation is given to each child as soon as reasonably practicable after the child’s arrival about—

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Requirement Due date

how to make a complaint or representations in relation to the home or the care the child receives and how any such complaint or representations will be dealt with. (Regulation 7(1)(a)(b)(c)(2)(d)(ii)) 02/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

*In order to meet the protection of children standard the registered provider must ensure ─ that staff—

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Requirement Due date

assess whether each child is at risk of harm, taking into account 02/10/2018 Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 4 information in the child’s relevant plans, and, if necessary, make arrangements to reduce the risk of any harm to the child.

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Requirement Due date

understand the roles and responsibilities in relation to protecting children that are assigned to them by the registered person.

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Requirement Due date

take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare. (Regulation 12(2)(a)(i)(v)(vi))

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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 promotes their welfare.

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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

lead and manage the home in a way that is consistent with the approach and ethos, and delivers the outcomes, set out in the home’s statement of purpose;

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Requirement Due date

ensure that staff work as a team where appropriate;

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Requirement Due date

ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child;

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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)(a)(b)(c)(h)) 02/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

If the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005(a) applies to the home—

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Requirement Due date

the registered person must ensure that the requirements of that Order and any regulations made under it, except for article 23 (duties of employees), are complied with in respect of the home. (Regulation 25(2)(b)) 02/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees— receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience. (Regulation 33(4)(b)) 02/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must maintain records (‘case records’) for each child which include the information and documents listed in Schedule 3 in relation to each child; are kept up to date; and 02/10/2018 Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 5 are signed and dated by the author of each entry. (Regulation 36(1)(a)(b)(c))

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Requirement Due date

* These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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Recommendations

 Those with a leadership and/or management role should be visible and accessible to staff and able to deliver their leadership and management responsibilities. Any registered manager employed in the home should have sufficient capacity to ensure that the Quality Standards are met for each child in the home. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 42, paragraph 10.7)  Each home must have clear arrangements in place to maintain effective management when the manager is absent, off duty or on leave. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 54, paragraph 10.20)  The registered person should have a workforce plan, which can fulfil the workplace requirements of Regulation 16, schedule 1 (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.8). This is in respect of ensuring that the workforce development plan is kept up to

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

A lack of stability in leadership and management in the home since the last inspection has led to the staff in the home failing to improve the quality of the care it provides for children.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The manager has admitted six children since the last inspection, and four of these children and young people have been discharged. Three children were discharged, as staff were unable to meet their individual needs, resulting in short placements and a lack of stability for children.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Leaders and manager do not admit children to the home in accordance with the home’s statement of purpose. The statement of purpose states that, ‘It is essential to have information that highlights all potential areas of risk or concern prior to admission.’ However, despite this, the director of the organisation admitted three children to the home without completing impact risk assessments and with insufficient assessment of the risks to the children or children already living in the home. Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 6 Children are admitted to the home without consideration about how staff will meet their linguistic and cultural needs. Furthermore, staff do not follow admissions processes by ensuring that children who are admitted to the home know how to complain. As a result, some children do not have the opportunity to express their wishes and feelings about their care.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Some children make progress in education and are engaged in activities that they enjoy in the community, such as football. However, for other children, there is a lack of structure and routine despite these being identified as necessary in children’s individual plans. Children have a significant amount of free time in the community where they become involved in anti-social behaviour and place themselves in situations of risk.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The manager does not ensure that children’s case files are kept up to date. There are documents missing from children’s files, such as local authority care plans and pathway plans. Staff raise the lack of documents with the local authority, but they do not escalate this further when they do not get a sufficient response. Because of this, staff do not have the required up-to-date information to support children’s needs. Recording overall in the home is poor, which is not safe practice for children or staff.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Staff promote children’s contact with their families and people who are important to them, in line with children’s care plans. Staff do not, however, challenge the local authority when these plans are not effective at keeping children safe.

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

Risk management arrangements in the home are inadequate and do not protect children from harm. Risk assessments do not reflect children’s known risks. For example, one child’s risk assessment had been copied and pasted from another document in relation to her sibling. Staff had signed the risk assessment to indicate that they had read and understood the level of risk and strategies to minimise the risk to the child. However, managers and staff had failed to identify that the information was factually incorrect and did not reflect the child’s individual needs. This fails to demonstrate that the manager and staff understand the risks for each child and have made appropriate arrangements to reduce the risk of any harm to the child.

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

Risk management in the home is poor. Staff do not follow actions set out in children’s risk assessments. For example, staff do not monitor children in line with their risk assessments when they return to the home under the influence of drugs and alcohol. A lack of management oversight of significant events means that this was not identified and addressed by managers. This lack of effective risk management does not ensure that children are protected from harm.

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

Staff do not take effective action to ensure that children are kept safe from harm and they have failed to follow the arrangements in care plans to keep them safe. For example, in one child’s risk assessment it is recorded that she should not have overnight stays with a known male, due to the identified risks. However, on the weekend prior to the inspection, the child stayed overnight at his home and no further action was taken to Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 7 minimise the risk, or any strategies put in place to prevent this occurring again.

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

Communication between staff is poor. The inspector observed vital information about a child’s safety being omitted in the hand-over process. This failed to ensure that all staff have the relevant and up-to-date information to protect a child’s safety. The manager acknowledged that this was unacceptable practice.

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

When children go missing from home, staff work effectively with the police and the local authorities to ensure that children are located as soon as possible. Staff attend strategy meetings when necessary. However, they are not always clear of the outcomes of these meetings and what action has been agreed to keep children safe. The manager’s oversight of missing from home incidents is poor. She does not consistently evaluate missing episodes. This lack of management oversight means that any issues with staff practice are not identified and addressed.

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

Staff lack knowledge about the risks that the use of the internet may pose for children. Only one member of staff has undertaken training in internet safety in children’s homes. A lack of knowledge in this area was confirmed following an observation of a discussion between staff who acknowledged that they lack knowledge in this area. This lack of knowledge is particularly relevant given the identified risk factors arising from e-safety for some children in the home and means that staff do not have the knowledge and skills to ensure that children are kept safe from harm.

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

The home does not consistently carry out fire evacuations in line with their policy. There has been no fire evacuation carried out since a new member of staff has been in post. This does not ensure that all staff are familiar with fire evacuation procedures so that they can ensure the safety of everyone in the home in the event of a fire.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leadership and management of the home are inadequate. This is because there has been no registered manager in post for 12 months. Since the home was registered on 21 August 2017, it has had four managers in post. The lack of a permanent manager has resulted in a lack of stability and consistency for children and has significantly impacted on the quality of care provided to children. Furthermore, staff have had no clear direction and leadership, which has impacted on their ability to provide a consistent team approach towards caring for children.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The management arrangements that have been put in place in the absence of a registered manager have not ensured effective leadership and management in the home. On 16 July 2018, the provider employed a new permanent manager who had no prior experience of managing a children’s home. On 6 August 2018, the manager gave immediate notice to the organisation. This has resulted in further instability in the leadership and management arrangements.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The provider made the decision to move another registered manager within the company to cover the management arrangements in this home. However, this meant Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 8 that the manager was expected to manage both homes, and there is no management cover in place for when the manager is absent or on leave. This arrangement does not provide a person in day-to-day control of the home and does not provide consistency to the home that is required. The manager acknowledged during the inspection that she is unable to manage the two homes effectively.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The responsible individual handed in her immediate notice during the inspection, which has resulted in a further lack of stability in the management team. Furthermore, it was evident from log book entries and discussion with the manager that the responsible individual had provided little support to the manager or staff since the last inspection.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

There is a lack of management oversight in the home because of insufficient management arrangements. For example, significant incident records and missing from home reports do not contain any manager evaluation and have not been signed off by senior staff. This has meant that shortfalls in staff practice have not been identified or addressed, and these shortfalls could continue unchecked.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Monitoring and review systems are ineffective. This has resulted in a lack of evaluation of care and its impact on outcomes for children, which means that leaders and managers are unable to identify and address shortfalls in staff practice to improve the service being provided. This has impacted on outcomes for children and compromised their safety and well-being.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The manager fails to lead and manage the home in a manner that is consistent with the aims outlined in the statement of purpose in several areas including admissions processes, ensuring that children know how to complain when they are admitted to the home, providing suitable support with children’s linguistic needs, following children and young people’s plans, and staff training and supervision.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The manager fails to ensure that staff have the necessary skills, experience and knowledge to meet the needs of the children that they are admitting to the home. For example, only two of the staff team have completed equality and diversity training. This is contrary to the home’s statement of purpose, which states that, ‘All staff will receive training in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.’ The lack of training has impacted on the staff team’s ability to work effectively with children and young people placed at the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff do not receive sufficient training. Some staff spoke about not having had training for some time. There is a lack of face-to-face training for staff and significant delays in new staff receiving mandatory training. For example, a member of staff who started in April 2018 had not undertaken training in medication administration, safeguarding, fire safety, food hygiene, health and safety, record-keeping, recording training and training in self-harm.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The manager and staff reported that there are issues in the staff team, particularly a lack of consistency in how staff are working with children. Staff have raised this in supervision sessions with the manager but there has been no effective action taken to Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 9 address this. The manager stated that this was addressed in the last team meeting, but the minutes do not reflect this, and staff spoken with during the inspection confirmed that a lack of consistency is still a problem. This does not ensure that children receive a consistent approach from the staff team to support their progress.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff, including the manager, do not receive regular supervision in line with the company’s policy. This does not ensure that staff are supported sufficiently in their roles or monitored effectively to ensure good practice.

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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: 1258770 10

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Aurora Care Young Peoples Services

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Pendle Suite, Hawkshaw Business Park, Longsight Road, Clayton-le-Dale, Lancashire BB2 7JA

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Inspector

Sarah Billett, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: 1258770 11 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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