Children's home run by Herman Allen

Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 1 SC067810 Registered provider: Holibrook House 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

The home is privately owned and provides care and accommodation for up to seven children. The home’s statement of purpose states that the home cares for children who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. In addition to having two other children’s homes, the company is also a registered education provider.

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Information about this children’s home

The registered manager was registered by Ofsted in 2017.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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good

How well children and young people are helped and protected good

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good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers good

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good

The children’s home provides effective services that meet the requirements for good.

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: sustained effectiveness

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

05/03/2019 Interim Sustained effectiveness 10/07/2018 Full Good 14/02/2018 Interim Improved effectiveness 07/06/2017 Full Requires improvement to be good Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 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 education standard is that children make measurable progress towards achieving their educational potential and are helped to do so. The standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure— that staff— maintain regular contact with each child’s education and training provider, including engaging with the provider and the placing authority to support the child’s education and training and to maximise the child’s achievement; raise any need for further assessment or specialist provision in relation to a child with the child’s education or training provider and the child’s placing authority; 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. (Regulation 8(1)(2)(a)(vi)(vii)(viii))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, this refers to the registered provider needing to seek the involvement of the virtual school when children do not have an educational placement. 01/10/2019

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Recommendations

 Ensure that the registered person is responsible for deciding what each review should focus on, based on the specific circumstances of the home at that time and any areas of high risk to the children that the home is designed to care for, such as missing or exploitation. They will also consider what information or data recorded in the home will form part of the evidence base for their analysis and conclusions. There is no expectation that the registered person will review the Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 4 home against every part of the Quality Standards every six months – registered persons should use their professional judgement to decide which factors to focus on. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 65, paragraph 15.4)

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Recommendations

 The registered person must ensure that all managers working in a children’s home must have the qualification in regulation 28(2) within the relevant timescales listed in regulation 28(3). All staff in a care role, including external agency or bank staff, must have the qualification in regulation 32(4) within the relevant timescale listed in regulation 32(5). The registered person may extend the time if the member of staff hasn’t worked in the role for a prolonged period, such as sick leave or maternity leave, or if it is not reasonable to expect the member of staff to complete in this timescale due to the nature of the hours they work. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.12)

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Recommendations

 The registered person must ensure that all children’s case records (regulation 36) are kept up to date and stored securely whilst they remain in the home. Case records must be kept up-to-date and signed and dated by the author of each entry. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.3)

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Recommendations

Specifically, this relates to ensuring that all safeguarding records are available in the registered manager’s absence and to ensure simplification of children’s risk assessments to make them more accessible to staff.

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Recommendations

 It is good practice for the registered person to ensure that a note of the content and/or outcomes of supervision sessions is kept and to ensure that both the person giving the supervision and staff member have a copy of the record. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 13.4)

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Recommendations

Specifically, this relates to ensuring that both the supervisor’s name and the supervisee’s name are recorded on a copy of the record, and both have signed and dated the record.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The registered manager and the staff team provide children with good quality, individualised care. Children have high levels of complex needs and present considerable challenges for staff. Despite these challenges, the staff team members work together to offer children a consistent and therapeutic approach.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The provider employs a psychologist who meets with the staff monthly to help them Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 5 consider strategies to manage children’s difficulties and challenges. Such therapeutic and reflective practice is helping staff to form and sustain better relationships with children. Relationship-based work also helps staff to gain children’s trust and provide more effective guidance and challenge to address their challenging behaviours.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The staff team shares good relationships with professionals, carers, children and parents/carers. The inspector observed staff managing children’s challenging behaviour in the home well. Staff showed some excellent responses to children, helping to keep them calm and engaged. Staff forge strong relationships with parents/carers and have advocated with confidence to promote contact where this is felt to be beneficial.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children generally make steady progress while living at this home. Small improvements can indicate good progress when considering children’s starting points. For example, children have established stability in the home following a series of placement breakdowns before they moved in. Children have also improved their family relationships, gained places at college and learned important life skills to support them in living more independently. One social worker said, ‘Children continue to feel safe and settled at this placement.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children have a routine and structure to their day. If they do not have a school placement, they are encouraged to get up and engage in educational activities and home tuition. However, one child’s educational planning drifted without the home liaising with the virtual school to seek an appropriate plan. The registered manager and staff team did not advocate to have a personal education planning meeting, despite a lack of engagement in the child’s home tuition.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children’s views are well understood by staff. Regular meetings are held with children to seek their views, and the deputy manager has created a system to ensure that managers provide a written response to children’s requests. Children also have meaningful one-to-one sessions and key-work sessions where relevant topics are discussed with them.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The following additional strengths were seen during the inspection:

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

 the staff’s ability to meet children’s cultural and identity needs, thus ensuring that children have and maintain links to their family through language, dietary needs and direct contact

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

 the availability of children’s weekly planners in pictorial form to support children with learning difficulties.

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

The home has appropriate safeguarding arrangements. Staff know the process of how to report concerns to the nominated safeguarding lead in the home and the designated officer or local authority child protection team. A minor shortfall found that all safeguarding records were only accessible by the registered manager, who was not Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 6 present for this inspection.

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

Risk assessments are thorough and are regularly updated. However, these assessments are currently detailed in long and comprehensive documents and are not easily accessible for new or agency staff, or in an emergency when a summary of risk is needed urgently.

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

The staff team responds well to prevent children from going missing from the home. Detailed records indicated the actions staff take to try to prevent children from going missing. On occasions when children have gone missing, the records detail how staff follow them as far and as safely as they possibly can and attempt to find them.

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

When children do not return home appropriate calls are made to the police, the placing authority and the child’s parents/carers. Staff use the police online reporting systems and are aware of children’s networks of friends and family.

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

When children return home, staff welcome them back and request that the placing authority of the child concerned complete a return home interview. Staff consider why children go missing and then discuss strategies with the relevant placing authority to help reduce these episodes.

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

Most of the children’s missing episodes had been responded to with a return home interview being conducted by the placing authority. When these interviews had not happened, it was because the child concerned had left the home again at the time of the return home interview.

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

Children are informed about expectations concerning their behaviour when they are admitted to the home and are subsequently reminded at the regular children’s meetings. Staff are guided by behaviour support plans and therapeutic plans to manage children’s negative behaviours.

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

Earlier this year several incidents occurred (some, in part, due to the mix of children) which required police involvement. All incidents were responded to promptly and, with the use of written agreements and reparative interventions, they have not been repeated.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

This home has strong and effective leadership. The registered manager is also the manager of another of the same provider’s homes. There is a competent deputy manager and management team who can act in the registered manager’s absence, when required. The provider also has a leadership team, including the responsible individual, a practice development manager and a head of service manager.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Leaders and managers know the children well. They persevere with children and work hard to provide them with stability and a high standard of care. Children usually enjoy lasting placements and make significant progress. Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 7 Staff say that they are well supported. They experience regular supervision, good induction, training, peer support and therapeutic advice at team meetings. The team members work well together and understand the overall objectives of working with a therapeutic approach, as outlined in the statement of purpose.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Despite staff reporting that they received regular and supportive supervision, some shortfalls were found in the consistency of recording. For instance, some records did not indicate who was present during the sessions or the duration of the supervision. Records were not consistently dated and signed to indicate agreement of the content of supervision sessions.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The external monitoring of the home by an independent person is improved. The monitoring reports are now more reflective of children’s, parents’ and other professionals’ views about the quality of care that is provided. Leaders and managers said that they find these monthly reports useful in helping them to improve services at the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager writes six-monthly reports on the quality of care provided at the home. However, these reports are too broad in scope and could be more specific and analytical, and include an action plan of how the service can be improved.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Staff understand the home’s statement of purpose and the overall ethos the provider is trying to establish. Generally, staff have good access to high-quality training and are part of the reflective practice groups that are held monthly in the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

All but one member of staff is trained to the required level 3 diploma or its equivalent. That member of staff has not yet completed this within the required timescale due to a problem with the training provider, but they are now on target to do so.

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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 Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 8 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: SC067810 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: First Floor, 172 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London E17 4QH

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Inspector

Christine Kennet, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC067810 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 looked after children, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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