Children's Home run by Capstone Care Provider Limited in Nottinghamshire

Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 1 SC392712 Registered provider: Capstone Care Provider 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 home provides care and accommodation for up to three children and young people with social and emotional difficulties. The home is owned by a private company.

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Information about this children’s home

The registered manager has been in post since 2012 and is appropriately qualified.

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Information about this children’s home

Inspection dates: 20 to 21 November 2019

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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.

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inadequate

Overall judgement at last inspection: good

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: none. However, following this inspection, Ofsted has issued a compliance notice in respect of regulation 12. Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

30/08/2018 Full Good 06/09/2017 Full Good 20/12/2016 Interim Sustained effectiveness 06/07/2016 Full Good Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 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

protect and promote each child’s welfare; and

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Requirement Due date

provide personalised care that meets each child’s needs, as recorded in the child’s relevant plans, taking account of the child’s background.

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Requirement Due date

(Regulation 6 (1)(a)(b)(2)(b)(i)(ii)(iv)) 8/1/2020

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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

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; 8/1/2020 Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 4 help each child to understand how to keep safe;

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Requirement Due date

have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of harm.

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Requirement Due date

This specifically relates to appropriately managing missing-from- care episodes, ensuring that staff have the appropriate skills to do this and that lessons are learned from incidents.

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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; and

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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.

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Requirement Due date

This includes the need to address the remedial work required in the kitchen and make sure that staff and children are not at risk from exposed wiring. 20/12/2019

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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; 8/1/2020 Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 5 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;

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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.

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Requirement Due date

demonstrate that practice in the home is informed and improved by taking into account and acting on—

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Requirement Due date

research and developments in relation to the ways in which the needs of children are best met;

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Requirement Due date

feedback on the experiences of children, including complaints received; 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.

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Requirement Due date

(Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b)(2)(a)(b)(c)(d)(e)(f)(g)(i)(ii)(h))

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Requirement Due date

keep the statement of purpose under review and, where appropriate, revise it; and

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Requirement Due date

notify HMCI of any revisions and send HMCI a copy of the revised statement within 28 days of the revision.

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Requirement Due date

* These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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Recommendations

 Sanctions used to address poor behaviour should be restorative in nature, to help children recognise the impact of their behaviour on others. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 46, paragraph 9.38)  The registered person must ensure that recruitment of staff safeguards children and Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 6 minimises potential risks to them. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 13.1)  Records must be kept up to date and stored securely. Staff should understand the importance of careful and objective recording. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraphs 14.3 and 14.4)

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

This home has been judged as being inadequate in all areas. Despite some progress in young people’s education, and preparation for independence, the serious shortfalls in safeguarding, staffing and leadership mean that the overall judgement is inadequate.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Staff do not provide care that is consistently in line with young people’s plans. There are currently several members of staff who are absent through leave or sickness, so staff are being drafted in from another home to cover shifts. In addition to this, casual and agency staff are used. These staffing issues prevent young people from receiving consistent care. Staff give conflicting information about their understanding of the young people’s needs, risks and progress. Many of the staff do not have a clear understanding of the young people in their care. This is compounded by poor recording, records not being updated and disorganised filing systems.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

This inconsistency in staffing also means that young people find it hard to form relationships with staff. All the young people said that they did not know all the staff or who was going to be on duty.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

The home is generally in good condition. However, there are some exposed wires and pipes in the kitchen area that require remedial work to ensure that the kitchen is safe for the young people and staff. This kitchen is used by young people as part of their independence programme.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Most young people are making progress in learning independence skills. However, their educational progress is more variable. One young person is attending college and has passed several exams, but not all young people are in full-time education, employment or training

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

Young people are not kept safe, particularly when they go missing from the home. Staff do not understand or follow young people’s risk assessments, or the home’s protocols and procedures for dealing with incidents of going missing from home.

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

Managers do not address these concerns effectively with all staff. When managers have spoken to staff, the learning has not been implemented or shared, as further poor practice ensues. Vulnerable young people have been left overnight at addresses unknown to staff or not checked by staff. Insufficient action is taken to keep young Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 7 people safe and return them home as swiftly as possible.

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

Risk assessments do not reflect each young person’s individual needs, risks and vulnerabilities and do not provide staff with clear guidance about how to reduce risk and keep each young person safe.

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

Staff lack up-to-date training regarding the risks young people may face in the community. This includes training in areas such as criminal and sexual exploitation, county lines, drugs and alcohol misuse and social media. This fails to keep young people safe.

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

Staff routinely use financial sanctions for poor behaviour. Staff have not considered the best way to manage unwanted behaviour or recognised how young people can positively learn from an incident, for example through key-work sessions or linking with external agencies.

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

Recruitment information for casual and agency staff is not sufficiently detailed. Gaps in the verification of pre-employment information mean that the manager cannot be sure that all checks are in place.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The home does not function well in the registered manager’s absence. Staff have been appointed to senior posts with little experience of working at this home and before obtaining the appropriate level 3 qualification. Increased staff absence, including the deputy manager’s absence, has highlighted vulnerabilities in leadership and management. At times, management arrangements and staffing levels are inadequate.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff do not always receive regular supervision. Some staff say that the support they receive from leaders is not always effective.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The quality of staff training is poor. Several courses are only available online, and staff complete several courses in one day. This means that learning may not be sufficiently in- depth and alone, it may not be enough to meet young people’s specific needs. There is no formal consolidation of learning. The company has recently i developed an evaluation tool for staff, to ascertain what staff have learned from these courses. However, this is yet to be implemented. Some training is now out of date and staff need to undertake refresher courses. This includes training in restraint, first aid, self-harm and safeguarding. There has been no training for staff on county lines.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The manager has addressed some of the requirements made at the last inspection. Staff now encourage and support young people to seek appropriate education and apprenticeships. Most policies and risk assessments have been updated. However, there are further shortfalls in these areas.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Monitoring by the registered manager is poor. The most recent review of care states that no recommendations were made by Ofsted at the last inspection, when two Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 8 recommendations were made. These included consulting young people regularly on their views about the home’s care, to inform and improve the quality of care provided. This does not always happen. Recommendations made by the independent visitor are not always met, with many recommendations repeated the following month. The statement of purpose was last updated in September 2019 but has not been sent to Ofsted.

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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: SC392712 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Capstone Care Provider Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: The Renewal Trust Business Centre, 3 Hawksworth Street, Nottingham NG3 2EG

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Children’s home details

Responsible individual: Trevor Edinborough

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Inspector

Judith Longden, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC392712 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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