Children's home run by Castle Homes Limited in North Northamptonshire

Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 1 SC489414 Registered provider: Castle Homes Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

The children’s home is a residential provision for up to four young people who have behavioural and complex associated difficulties. The children’s home is run by a private organisation. There has been no registered manager in post since 27 August 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 and/or widespread failures that mean children are not protected or their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded, and the care and experiences of children are poor and they are not making progress.

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inadequate

Overall judgement at last inspection: inadequate

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: A restriction of accommodation notice and four compliance notices were served as a result of the previous full inspection. Seven requirements were also made. The provider demonstrated compliance with the restriction of accommodation notice when this was monitored by Ofsted on 10 September 2018. No placements had been made. The restriction of accommodation notice remained in place, effective until 6 November 2018. The compliance notices and requirements had not reached their expiry dates. Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

30/07/2018 Full Inadequate 05/07/2017 Full Good 02/03/2017 Interim Sustained effectiveness 28/09/2016 Full Good Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 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 protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe.

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Requirement Due date

(2) In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure–

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Requirement Due date

(i) 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

(iii) have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of harm;

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Requirement Due date

(v) 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

(vi) take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare; and

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Requirement Due date

(vii) are familiar with, and act in accordance with, the home’s child protection policies. (Regulation 12(1), (2)(a)(i)(iii)(iv)(vi)(vii)) 04/01/2019

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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

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

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Requirement Due date

(b) ensure that staff work as a team where appropriate; 04/01/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 4 (c ) ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child;

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Requirement Due date

(e) ensure that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care to each child.

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Requirement Due date

(h) use monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. (Regulation 13(1), (2)(b)(c)(e)(h)) *The care planning standard is that children–

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Requirement Due date

(a) receive effectively planned care in or through the children’s home; and

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Requirement Due date

(b) have a positive experience of arriving at or moving on from the home.

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Requirement Due date

(2) In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure–

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Requirement Due date

(b) (ii) that arrangements are in place to–

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Requirement Due date

manage and review the placement of each child in the home.

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Requirement Due date

ensure that each employee completes an appropriate induction;

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Requirement Due date

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 14(1)(a)(b), (2)(b)(ii)) 04/01/2019

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Requirement Due date

(b) notify HMCI of any revisions and send HMCI a copy of the revised statement within 28 days of the revision. (Regulation 16(3)(a)(b)) 04/01/2019

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Requirement Due date

ensure that each employee completes an appropriate induction.

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees–

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Requirement Due date

receive practice-related supervision by a person with 04/01/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 5 appropriate experience. (Regulation 33(1)(a)(b), (4)(b))

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Requirement Due date

If there is a referral of a person working in the home pursuant to section 35 (Regulated activity providers: duty to refer) of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006(a), the registered person must without delay notify–

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Requirement Due date

(b) notify HMCI of any revisions and send HMCI a copy of the revised statement within 28 days of the revision. (Regulation 16(3)(a)(b)) 04/01/2019

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Requirement Due date

* These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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Recommendations

 Children’s homes must comply with relevant health and safety legislations (alarms, food, hygiene, etc.). (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 15, paragraph 3.9) In particular, opened food in the freezer should be labelled.  Expectations of standards of behaviour should be high for all staff and children. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 39, paragraph 8.11) In particular, staff should act as positive role models. Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 6

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Since the previous full inspection, one child has moved out of the home and one child has remained in placement. Leaders and managers have failed to meet the four compliance notices, and informed the inspectors that the staff group is not ready to consider new admissions. Leaders and managers also expressed concerns about the current and ongoing safety of the child in placement. However, they were unable to demonstrate that sufficient action had been taken in the attempt to review the placement or to minimise risks for this child.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Children’s educational needs are not being met. Despite moving into the home in March 2018, the child remaining in placement is not attending school and no school has been identified. Some tutoring provision and the staff’s best efforts to promote a learning environment are not sufficient. This child has made little progress with her educational and social development. Staff have been slow to identify suitable leisure activities for the child and they have given little thought to how to help her to find and integrate into a peer group.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The staff team is failing to provide children with well-planned care. During this inspection period, concerns were raised by leaders, managers and external auditors about the staff team’s inability to follow care plans and to maintain appropriate boundaries with children. Direct feedback from a child confirmed their feelings of dissatisfaction about their current experiences: feeling isolated, with no peer group and poor relationships with some staff members. This is exacerbated by poor consultation mechanisms. Staff react to incidents and do not work proactively with the child.

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

Staff do not recognise safeguarding incidents, despite receiving recent guidance and intervention from leaders and managers. Their responses have been insufficient following serious incidents when the child has placed herself at considerable risk. There have been three incidents when the child has left the property through or by climbing over a gate, directly accessing a well-used road. It took three weeks, following the third incident, for a new gate to be fitted.

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

Staff fail to prevent and report safeguarding issues and concerns. One incident occurred when a child was able to obtain the keys to the home. She entered a locked room at night and accessed the office where confidential paperwork is stored, as well as items that could cause her harm. Her access to keys should have been prevented. Following this incident, the deputy manager failed to take remedial action to prevent a recurrence. Neither did she report the incident to the responsible individual in charge of the home at the time.

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

An internal investigation of this incident failed to address the above failures. It also found that the door alarm system had not worked on a number of occasions prior to this Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 7 incident. This had not been reported to managers so that the alarm could be repaired. This is a serious failure by staff to take adequate precautions to protect the child.

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

Weaknesses in relation to risk management fail to provide children with adequate safeguards. Examples were identified of the staff’s failure to update risk assessments and care plans in response to incidents and emerging concerns. In some cases, staff responded to incidents by restricting activities with no plan to reintroduce these safely. Consequently, children do not learn how to begin to take appropriate responsibility or to learn from their mistakes.

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

Leaders and managers described their concerns about the staff team’s inability to maintain a safe environment for the child in placement. However, they have not described or demonstrated an adequate strategy to improve this concerning situation.

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

Poor food hygiene practice includes unsafe storage, for example unlabelled and unwrapped food stored in the freezer. The risk of contamination and eating food beyond its expiry date is high.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Complicated interim management arrangements following the resignation of the registered manager have not worked. An agreed plan of support, which includes the responsible individual and two registered managers from other homes to support the current deputy manager, has not occurred in practice.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers were unable to demonstrate how these managers’ roles were delineated, how they were to communicate and how their input was to be coordinated to ensure consistency. Furthermore, no rota was available to show when the managers would be present at the home. Their attempts to address concerns about the consistency and level of support provided to the deputy manager and staff team also failed. A further consequence of this lack of clarity has been poor or no communication with Ofsted. The regulator has received neither notifications of serious events nor updates to the home’s statement of purpose. Ofsted is therefore unable to sufficiently monitor the home between inspection visits.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff have failed to act as good role models to the child. On separate occasions while transporting the child, staff have been involved in incidents which have been unprofessional or illegal. The effect of these incidents upon the child have not been fully explored, demonstrating a disregard for her welfare and emotional well-being.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

An audit of staff’s experiences and abilities has not occurred following the inadequate judgement at the previous inspection. Team meetings have taken place. However, the managers commented that staff failed to engage in the improvement process until the recent team meeting on 5 October 2018. The team meetings have not had a clear focus on the issues that led to the inadequate judgement.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The deputy manager has begun to address some issues by instigating a performance Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 8 improvement plan for two staff members. However, this has only just started. An induction process is in place, but the staff’s further development needs, as identified by this process, are not addressed in supervisions or personal development plans. Safeguarding, as a topic, is not givenpriority as an agenda item in supervisions.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The action plan to address the compliance notices issued from the previous inspection fails to address the safeguarding shortfalls. The lack of clarity about who is responsible and by which date fails to state who is accountable. The action plan does not specifically address all of the shortfalls and failures identified at the last inspection. Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 9

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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 difference 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: SC489414 10

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Castle Homes Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: 5th floor, 80 Hammersmith Road, London W14 8UD

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Inspectors:

Suzy Lemmy, social care inspector John Pledger, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC489414 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 looked after children, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspectors:

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Inspectors:

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Inspectors:

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