Children's home run by Hopscotch Care Limited in Lancaster

Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 1 SC479632 Registered provider: Hopscotch Care Limited

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Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This is a privately run children’s home that provides care and accommodation for up to five young people, irrespective of gender, who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. There has been no registered manager in post since April 2018. A manager has been appointed but has yet to make an application for registration to the regulator.

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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 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

Date of last inspection: 22 January 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: SC479632 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

22/01/2019 Full Requires improvement to be good 14/03/2018 Interim Improved effectiveness 20/06/2017 Full Good 30/03/2017 Interim Improved effectiveness Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 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.

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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

help each child to achieve the child’s education and training targets, as recorded in the child’s relevant plans;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to attend education or training in accordance with the expectations in the child’s relevant plans. (Regulation 8 (1)(2)(a)(i)(x)) 02/09/2019

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Requirement Due date

The positive relationships standard is that children are helped to develop, and to benefit from, relationships based on—

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Requirement Due date

an understanding about acceptable behaviour; and

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Requirement Due date

positive responses to other children and adults. (Regulation 11 (1)(a)(b)(c)) 02/09/2019

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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

help each child to develop resilience and skills that prepare the child to return home, to live in a new placement or to live 02/09/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 4 independently as an adult. (Regulation 6 (1)(a)(b)(2)(vi)) 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

manage relationships between children to prevent them from harming each other. (Regulation 12 (1)(2)(a)(iv)) 02/09/2019

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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.

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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 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)) 02/09/2019

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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 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

ensure that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care to each child;

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Requirement Due date

understand the impact that the quality of care provided in the home is having on the progress and experiences of each child and use this understanding to inform the development of the quality of care provided in the home. (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b)(2)(a)(b)(e)(f)) 02/09/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 5 A person may only manage a children’s home if—

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Requirement Due date

the person is of integrity and good character;

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Requirement Due date

having regard to the size of the home, its statement of purpose, and the number and needs (including any needs arising from any disability) of the children—

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Requirement Due date

the person has the appropriate experience, qualification and skills to manage the home effectively and lead the care of children;

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Requirement Due date

and the person is physically and mentally fit to manage the home. (Regulation 28 (1)(a)(b)(i)(ii)) 02/09/2019

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must recruit staff using recruitment procedures that are designed to ensure children’s safety. (Regulation 32 (1)) Specifically, that any recorded convictions for staff are assessed for any impact they may have on the staff member’s ability to provide safe care. 02/09/2019

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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 33 (4)(b))

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, that staff new to the organisation should have the stated level of supervision and that the new manager should have frequent supervision. 02/09/2019

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Requirement Due date

The health and well-being standard is that—

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Requirement Due date

the health and well-being needs of children are met;

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Requirement Due date

children receive advice, services and support in relation to their health and well-being; and

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Requirement Due date

children are helped to lead healthy lifestyles.

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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 each child has access to such dental, medical, nursing, psychiatric and psychological advice, treatment and other services as the child may require. (Regulation 10 (1)(a)(b)(c)(2)(c)) This relates to children accessing services to help them reduce their drug misuse. 02/09/2019 Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 6 *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; and

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Requirement Due date

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

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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 children are admitted to the home only if their needs are within the range of needs of children for whom it is intended that the home is to provide care and accommodation, as set out in the home’s statement of purpose. (Regulation 14 (1)(a)(b)(2)(a)) This relates to ensuring that a thorough matching process takes place and the suitability of the placement match is evidenced and recorded. 02/09/2019

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must maintain records (‘case records’) for each child which—

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Requirement Due date

include the information and documents listed in Schedule 3 in relation to each child. (Regulation 36 (1)(a)) 02/09/2019

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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

Young people have not all made good progress since the last full inspection due to a period of instability among the management and staff team. One young person has experienced a placement breakdown due to extreme behaviours, including causing serious damage to the home. This has meant that the home environment has not always been homely and welcoming for young people, despite efforts by staff to repair the damage and replace damaged furniture.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The loss of nine members of staff since the last full inspection has resulted in disruption for young people. They have not experienced continuity of care and some long-standing staff members with whom they had trusting relationships have left, leaving at least one young person feeling that he does not have secure and significant relationships with staff. This has an impact on young people’s behaviour, including causing damage, drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

None of the young people placed are in full-time education. One young person engages in no education, training or employment at all. Despite the efforts of staff, he is resistant Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 7 to all attempts to engage in any productive and meaningful ways to occupy himself. This leads to him feeling bored and disengaged from the placement. The young person reported to the inspector that he was just passing time in the home, waiting to leave. The home has not effectively challenged the placing authority to review the placement and evaluate whether it is meeting his needs. Other placing authorities have not been challenged over the lack of full-time education and have also not provided the home with personal education plans for the young people.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Young people are not all in positive routines and can be unresponsive to staff trying to implement their routines. For example, young people often stay in bed for the morning and get up around lunchtime or even later. This does not promote a positive daytime and sleep routine.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Young people know how to complain and have used the complaints process to express their dissatisfaction with the previous manager. They complained that the manager was lazy and they had no confidence in managers’ decisions.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Young people who engage in drug misuse do not engage with drug services or reduce their drug use over time. Young people have displayed a range of highly disturbed behaviour due to drug misuse. This has a detrimental impact on their physical and emotional health.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Positive relationships are not always evident between young people. Young people have engaged in drug misuse together. Young people have complained about the damage caused by another young person to their home environment.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Many local authority documents are missing from the young people’s files and, although emails have been sent to request them, there is no system in place to monitor this or ensure that the requests are escalated if the documents are not received. This means that the home does not have the most recent local authority care plan to work to for the young people, and may not have essential information about their health or education.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Young people who are approaching the time for leaving the home to live independently have not progressed in their acquisition of independence skills. One young person who is 17 years old does not engage in any independence learning or training and therefore will not have the skills to live independently when he leaves the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Newly admitted young people do seem to have better engagement in the placement. They are forming more positive relationships with staff and are starting to make some progress.

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

While there are no widespread concerns in respect of safeguarding practice, young people at this home have exposed themselves to regular and serious risks. Staff have not had the skills either to prevent or manage this. Risks and strategies to manage risks are identified in young people’s risk assessments; however, the absence of strong Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 8 positive relationships with staff, due to the very high staff turnover, has meant that young people have not been responsive to efforts made to reduce their risk-taking behaviours. Serious incidents are well recorded and clearly link to other documents. They often cross-reference to a relevant key-work session; however, it is clear that staff do not have the skills to de-escalate situations and nor do young people show respect for staff. Incident numbers do not decrease over time for some young people. Young people express in the records that they do not want to live in the home. Additionally,

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

when managers comment on incident records they identify that key staff leaving has had an impact on young people’s behaviour.

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

The home’s new manager has introduced ‘incident correlation packs’ for all serious safeguarding incidents, which describe the incident and show the follow-up work undertaken with young people to help them understand their risks.

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

Young people have put themselves at risk through missing from home, drug and alcohol misuse, anger and aggression and serious damage to the home itself. Some young people have made extremely serious threats to staff and have attempted to cause them serious harm, for example by throwing furniture at them.

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

Some young people have been criminalised when staff have been unable to manage their behaviour and have resorted to calling the police for support. Police involvement has resulted in criminal damage and assault convictions for one young person.

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

Relationships between young people are not always safe. There have been occasions when young people have been involved in bullying. One young person stole money from another more vulnerable young person and showed no remorse for his actions.

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

Young people are at high risk of self-harm. For some, these risks escalate over time. There are numerous incidents where young people threaten suicide. Staff have had only partial success in ensuring that young people engage in support to reduce their risks in this area and address their mental health needs. In part this is also due to placing authorities not providing the correct funding for therapeutic work to continue.

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

One young person has made a serious allegation against a member of staff which has been upheld. Although the correct process was followed when the allegation was made, this does not mitigate the fact that she experienced harm in her home where she should have been safe.

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

Safe recruitment procedures are not always followed. For example, convictions recorded on Disclosure and Barring Service checks are not always considered and discussed with staff prior to them being appointed, which potentially compromises young people’s safety.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 9 Dating back to the previous inspection of this home, the home’s management has had some widespread shortfalls, which have now been recognised by the newly appointed acting manager. While efforts have now begun to rectify the issues identified, there has not yet been sufficient time to make progress with the home, staff team and young people to prevent an inadequate judgement in this area.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Previous managers have not identified that some young people have not made progress and are not achieving the outcomes as set out in the home’s statement of purpose. Managers have had insufficient understanding that young people’s progression and experience of living at the home have been inadequate and so have not acted to address this.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

There has been an extremely high turnover of staff, largely due to ill feeling between staff members and managers, resulting in a number of staff members leaving. Staff have not worked as a cohesive team to provide consistent care to young people. The atmosphere in the home is reported to have been tense. Staff have had to be reminded not to come into work in a negative frame of mind and not to openly criticise one another. The high turnover of staff has resulted in young people losing some staff who they had positive attachments to. This has affected their progression and experience of living at the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The home’s acting manager is new to the role and has not been offered sufficient supervision. This does not ensure that he is fully supported to implement changes and make improvements. Likewise, newly appointed staff who are unqualified and inexperienced have not been given the correct amount of support and supervision to ensure that they are familiar with and are implementing best practice.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Deficits in the quality of placement matching have been raised in the home’s two previous inspections and are raised again at this inspection. This is also escalated to a compliance notice due to lack of progression in this area. While managers are able to verbalise their thought processes around matching young people for admission, there is no documentary evidence to confirm that these considerations take place. It is not clear whether new admissions have been appropriately matched to young people already in placement who were exhibiting some high risks and challenging behaviours.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

During the inspection managers were unable to evidence that all staff had had training in key areas, such as safeguarding, fire safety and Team Teach (behaviour management).

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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 Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 10 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: SC479632 11

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Hopscotch Care Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: 19 Lancaster Road, Carnforth LA5 9LD

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Inspector

Charlie Bamber, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC479632 12 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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