Children's home run by The Partnership of Care Today

Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 1 SC025409 Registered provider: The Partnership of Care Today Children’s Services

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Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This privately run children’s home can provide accommodation for up to three young people who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The home may also provide care and accommodation for children who have learning disabilities.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager has been registered with Ofsted since 6 July 2018.

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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 failures that mean children 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

Date of last inspection: 16 January 2018

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inadequate

Overall judgement at last inspection: improved effectiveness

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

16/01/2018 Interim Improved effectiveness 19/06/2017 Full Requires improvement to be good 13/03/2017 Interim Improved effectiveness 01/12/2016 Full Requires improvement Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 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 quality and purpose of care standard is that children receive care from staff who—

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Requirement Due date

understand the children’s home’s overall aims and the outcomes it seeks to achieve for children;

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Requirement Due date

use this understanding to deliver care that meets children’s needs and supports them to fulfil their potential.

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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

understand and apply the home’s statement of purpose;

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Requirement Due date

understand and apply the home’s statement of purpose.

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, that the registered person and the staff ensure that young people receive coordinated care and support daily that ensures that their identified needs are met. 19/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

The education standard is that children make measurable progress towards achieving their education potential and are helped to do so. In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure that staff— help each child to understand the importance and value of education, learning, training and employment; help a child who is excluded from school, or who is of compulsory school age but not attending school, to access educational and training support throughout the period of exclusion or non-attendance and to return to school as soon as possible; and staff help each child 19/10/2018 Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 4 who is above compulsory school age to participate in further education, training or employment and to prepare for future care, education or employment.

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Requirement Due date

* The protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and 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;

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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;

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Requirement Due date

that the effectiveness of the home’s child protection policies is monitored regularly.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that all identified risks and the strategies to reduce those risks are recorded effectively in each child’s relevant plans. Ensure that this is done in a manner that enables staff to follow them in the delivery of care. That staff are familiar with and follow the home’s safeguarding policies and procedures, particularly regarding allegations against staff. That staff understand the roles and responsibilities in relation to protecting children that are assigned to them by the registered person. That care is delivered in a manner which considers the risks identified in relevant plans, and that measures identified to reduce those risks are implemented and delivered by staff so that those receiving care are safe and protected. 19/10/2018

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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— 19/10/2018 Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 5 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; ensure that staff work as a team where appropriate; ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child, and ensure that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care to each child.

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Requirement Due date

The care planning standard is that children—

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Requirement Due date

receive effectively planned care in or through the children’s home; that arrangements are in place to manage and review the placement of each child in the home; and that each child’s relevant plans are followed.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that plans are in place for the day-to-day care of children and that placement plans reflect the needs identified in each child’s individual local authority plan. 19/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees—

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Requirement Due date

undertake appropriate continuing professional development; and receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience.

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, ensure that all staff are trained so that they can respond to risks associated with the use of ligatures by young people and training in attachment theory. 19/10/2018

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Requirement Due date

* These requirements are subject to a compliance notice. Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 6

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The managers’ and staff team’s ability to keep children safe and improve their aspirations and outcomes is limited. Children lack a sufficient structure and routine to their day. Some do not engage in full-time education and all of them too often sleep or remain in their bedrooms until late in the afternoon. This routine heightens risks to their safety and little action is taken to address this. The lack of effective boundary-setting, nurturing and purposeful routines for children is contrary to the home’s statement of purpose, which states: ‘The aim is to provide a warm, friendly, safe and supporting environment based on nurturing principles.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Some children living at the home have made good progress in their education, with one child achieving 96% school attendance. However, for other children, who are not in full- time education, the arrangements to ensure that they are provided with and participate in structured education activities are inadequate. Furthermore, there are no education plans in place that support and encourage children’s learning and educational progress. Consequently, their education needs are not always met.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

On a positive note, some children, for whom going missing from home was previously a feature of their lives, experience a significant reduction in the frequency of these episodes.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The arrangements for children to have contact with people who are important to them are subject to careful assessment and monitoring. Staff members promote contact by providing children with practical and emotional support. Consequently, children enjoy good-quality, safe contact with family and friends when deemed to be in their best interests.

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

Managers and staff are unable to identify, manage or minimise risks to children. Poor- quality risk assessments prevent the staff from having a clear understanding of children’s needs and vulnerabilities, including the consideration of their previous known risks. These assessments do not provide staff with effective strategies to enable them to keep children safe. This fails to ensure that risks are managed consistently by staff and that appropriate support is in place to help keep children safe.

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

Staff supervision of children does not meet their assessed needs. There are prolonged periods during the day and night when staff are unaware of where children are or what they are doing. For example, children with a history of self-harming behaviour are spending long periods of time alone in their bedrooms. The lack of effective care planning fails to provide suitable strategies for staff to follow so that they can care for the children on a day-to-day basis safely. In particular, staff are not sufficiently engaging children in purposeful activities that would reduce the risk associated with spending long periods alone. Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 7 On two occasions, children have made allegations about staff practice, whereby they have alleged that they had sustained injuries. The provider has failed to ensure that the home’s policies and procedures in relation to managing such allegations against staff are

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

followed. Furthermore, accurate and complete records about allegations are not maintained. For example, the manager failed to provide a full and accurate account of the two allegations to the designated officer or to Ofsted. This prevents relevant agencies from having a clear understanding of how children are safeguarded. This practice also hinders Ofsted’s ability to evaluate whether sufficient action has been taken to minimise risks.

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

Children’s safety is further compromised by the lack of independent oversight of physical restraints when the manager has been directly involved in the restraint. This lack of oversight fails to demonstrate that the interventions used have been carefully considered to ensure that they are appropriate, and that they have only been used as a last resort to protect the children involved.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The registered manager is suitably qualified and has the experience to undertake his role. However, his failure to ensure that effective care planning is in place for each child and that the staff team strictly adheres to safeguarding procedures to protect children, have led to the serious shortfalls found during this inspection.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The children live in a home that is poorly managed. The ineffective leadership means that the home is not fulfilling its aims and objectives in accordance with its statement of purpose.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

There have been failings in management oversight and monitoring of the home to identify areas of weakness and to take decisive action to resolve these. Robust internal monitoring does not take place regularly and, as a result, the quality and standard of care have fallen to an unacceptable level. The manager has not adequately reviewed records in the home, or evaluated incidents that have occurred, to identify shortfalls in staff practice and to highlight patterns and trends. For example, on one restraint record the staff member involved had clearly stated that they ‘had no alternative but to restrain’ a child. The manager’s overview of this incident was recorded as ‘no restraint’.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Internal placement plans for children do not reflect the changes agreed at review meetings with local authority social workers. For example, a child who was on a one-to- one staffing ratio had this arrangement changed at his review; however, this was not reflected in the home’s placement plan for the child.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The manager has failed to provide staff with regular supervision. A newly appointed staff member, who is required in the home’s policy to have supervision every two weeks, has not had supervision for over two months. A lack of adequate supervision does not provide staff with an opportunity to reflect on their practice to ensure that they are promoting better outcomes for all children in their care and to identify any further Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 8 training that they may need. For example, the newest member of staff had not undertaken any training about how to respond should a child use a ligature. Given that this is a recorded known risk for a child currently placed in the home, this is a significant shortfall. Other staff had not had training in attachment, which is an important factor in children’s experiences.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The lack of rigour by the registered manager has not helped the home to sufficiently protect children and maintain good enough standards of care. This has led to children’s safety and well-being not being promoted at all times.

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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: SC025409 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Lansdowne House, 85 Buxton Road, Stockport, Cheshire SK2 6LR

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Inspector

Elaine Allison, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC025409 10 achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children’s social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, further education and skills, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for children looked after, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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