Children's Home run by Break Charity in Cambridgeshire

Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 1 SC439153 Registered provider: Break

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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, which is run by a registered charity, provides long-term placements for up to four children who have experienced trauma and may have experienced neglect and/or emotional abuse. The manager of the home was registered in October 2011.

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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 safeguarded.

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inadequate

Date of last inspection: 20 February 2019

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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: SC439153 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

20/02/2019 Full Requires improvement to be good 17/07/2017 Full Good 17/01/2017 Interim Improved effectiveness 24/08/2016 Full Good Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 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

ensure that the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed and furnished so as to—

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Requirement Due date

enable each child to participate in the daily life of the home. (Regulation 6(1)(a)(b)(2)(c)(i)(ii)) 01/08/2019

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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

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

ascertain and consider each child’s views, wishes and feelings, and balance these against what they judge to be in the child’s best interests when making decisions about the child’s care and welfare. (Regulation 7(1)(c)(2)(a)(i)) 01/08/2019

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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. 01/08/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 4 In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure—

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Requirement Due date

that the home’s day-to-day care is arranged and delivered so as to keep each child safe and to protect each child effectively from harm. (Regulation 12(1)(2)(b))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, assess the risks of admitting new children to the home and ensure that risk management plans reflect recent incidents. 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—

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Requirement Due date

that the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed, furnished and maintained so as to protect each child from avoidable hazards to the child’s health. (Regulation 12(1)(2)(d)) 01/08/2019

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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

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

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

ensure that the home has sufficient staff to provide care for each child; and

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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)(d)(h))* 26/07/2019

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must prepare and implement a policy 01/08/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 5 (‘the behaviour management policy’) which sets out—

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Requirement Due date

how appropriate behaviour is to be promoted in the children’s home; and

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Requirement Due date

the measures of control, discipline and restraint which may be used in relation to children in the home. (Regulation 35(1)(a)(b))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that incidents of bullying are recorded and monitored. The registered person must notify HMCI and each other relevant person without delay if—

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Requirement Due date

there is any other incident relating to a child which the registered person considers to be serious. (Regulation 40(4)(c)) 01/08/2019

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Requirement Due date

* These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Children have experienced fear, uncertainty and instability as a consequence of poor matching and decision-making on an admission. The pre-admission assessment and matching document failed to consider the associated risks of the group dynamics. The manager’s concerns about this admission have been borne out, with a series of incidents of increasing severity. These incidents have been detrimental to children’s well-being and left them at risk of injury. Staff have not been able to de-escalate these incidents to meet children’s needs and to keep them safe.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Two of the children are unhappy and ill at ease following the recent events. One child said, ‘It’s so unpredictable. I just don’t know what is going to happen next. I don’t want to stay here at the moment.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Two established children have long, successful placements and a strong bond with the staff. Until recently, they were settled, happy and making progress in all areas of their lives. One child expressed her concerns to the manager in a two-part complaint. The manager has failed to respond in a timely manner. Another child has had an increased number of behavioural incidents and there are indicators of distress. The manager has failed to ensure that the children’s views are evaluated or responded to.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

One child has successfully taken her exams and has a part-time job. However, another child has no education provision and no purpose or structure to the day. Another child has been temporarily excluded from school following recent incidents at the home. The behaviours at school are potentially linked to unrest at the home. Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 6 Significant damage to the kitchen has resulted in children being taken to the office by the staff to avoid flying glass. Food and consumables have been thrown over the floor and walls. Dry foods have been contaminated and spoilt. Staff have stored fresh foods in the locked office following this incident. This reduces children’s access to food and means that they must ask the staff to collect food. These restrictions are inconvenient and impede children’s emerging independence.

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

A child who is at high risk of self-injury spends significant time in their bedroom alone. The bedroom is in an unsafe, unacceptable condition. It contains rubble, glass, shards of mirror, a lighter, smoking debris and dirty plates and cups. The window is boarded up and the furniture is broken. The room is dirty and contains items that pose a serious risk to the child. This serious concern has not been addressed, despite the staff confirming that the bedroom had been in this state for some time. The staff have failed to provide a safe or clean environment for the child. There has been a complete failure to check the bedroom and adequately supervise what is happening, leaving the child at significant risk.

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

The staff do not manage risk effectively. One child expressed thoughts of suicide to a member of staff. Despite the staff member recording these concerns, the child’s risk assessment was not updated. It is not clear whether the child was offered support.

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

The group dynamics are volatile. One child physically assaulted another child in an unprovoked attack. Staff intervened and separated the children. Staff have not been able to prevent one child targeting another child verbally, leaving children feeling uneasy.

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

There has been significant damage and breakages at the home. Dangerous and hot items have been thrown. Despite this, the staff have failed to intervene and safely manage the children who are experiencing difficulty. The staff have been unable to reduce these incidents and therefore failed to keep the children safe.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

There are significant shortfalls in the day-to-day management and maintenance of the physical environment. These shortfalls have placed the children at serious risk of harm.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The systems to record and monitor incidents are weak and not embedded. Managerial monitoring is poor and ineffective. Managers and staff do not always update risk assessments following incidents. They fail to identify high-risk behaviours clearly and have not been able to reduce them. Managers and staff have failed to record serious safeguarding concerns in incident report forms and matching is poor. There has been a significant failure to monitor the condition of a child’s bedroom, leaving one child at significant risk.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The manager has been registered since 2011 and is qualified for the role. However, there continue to be management failings. Although some efforts were made to monitor managerial tasks, during May 2019 these were not kept up to date. Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 7 The regular use of agency staff has resulted in serious incidents in which there has been an inconsistent and inexperienced approach to the children. One member of agency staff allowed a child to buy sweets and sugary drinks that are known to trigger challenging behaviour. An incident followed in which a young child became argumentative and left the home briefly. On another occasion, an agency member of staff followed a child out of the house and the child produced a knife. The shift leader provided clear advice to the agency staff, which they ignored. This resulted in the child removing the staff member’s phone and keeping the knife. The staff felt that, due to the unknown location of the

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

knife, it was unsafe for the child to return to the home; the police kept the child in custody overnight. This incident placed all the children at risk.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff have not had self-harm awareness training and some staff have not had training in managing ligatures. As a result, the approach to managing self-injurious behaviours is inconsistent and lacks strategy or planning.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Notifications to Ofsted fail to accurately reflect the severity and seriousness of the incident. On one occasion, a notification was not made following a serious incident. Failure to provide accurate notifications prevents Ofsted having oversight of events at the home, which reduces the effectiveness of the safeguard intended.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The staff team is dedicated to the children. Staff have experienced a year of conflict, an absent manager and a number of difficult changes that they were not consulted about. Despite this, core staff have stayed and continue to give their absolute best effort.

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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’.

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Children’s home details

Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 8 Unique reference number: SC439153

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Schofield House, 1 Spar Road, Norwich, Norwich NR6 6BX

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Children’s home details

Responsible individual: Annriette Mynhardt

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Inspector

Deirdra Keating, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC439153 9 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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