Children's Home run by Impact For Change Ltd in Somerset

Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 1 Registered provider: Impact for Change 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 registered for up to three children. It provides care for children who have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The home offers medium- or long-term placement. The post of manager is currently vacant.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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requires improvement to be good

How well children and young people are helped and protected requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

The children’s home is not yet delivering good help and care for children and young people. However, there are no serious or widespread failures that result in their welfare not being safeguarded or promoted.

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requires improvement to be good

Date of last inspection: 26 February 2019

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requires improvement to be good

Overall judgement at last inspection: requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

26/02/2019 Full Requires improvement to be good Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 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

5: Engaging with the wider system to ensure children’s needs are met In meeting the quality standards, the registered person must, and must ensure that staff—

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Requirement Due date

seek to involve each child’s placing authority effectively in the child’s care, in accordance with the child’s relevant plans;

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Requirement Due date

seek to secure the input and services required to meet each child’s needs;

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Requirement Due date

if the registered person considers, or staff consider, a placing authority’s or a relevant person’s performance or response to be inadequate in relation to their role, challenge the placing authority or the relevant person to seek to ensure that each child’s needs are met in accordance with the child’s relevant plans.

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Requirement Due date

12: The protection of children standard The protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe. In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to ensure—

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Requirement Due date

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

are familiar with, and act in accordance with, the home’s child protection policies; 16/03/2020 Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 4 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.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure safeguarding records provide a comprehensive record of actions taken by staff to safeguard children. Ensure Leaders and managers review the practice of staff using their personal mobile phones to take photographs of children on activities.

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Requirement Due date

13: The leadership and management standard 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 ensure that staff—

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Requirement Due date

have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child;

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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

In addition, determine the suitability of staff who are still in their probationary period being in sole charge of the home. 16/03/2020

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Requirement Due date

14: The care planning standard The care planning standard is that children receive effectively planned care in or through the children’s home.

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Requirement Due date

In particular, provide staff with effective guidance in children’s placement plans about how to meet the child’s identified and emerging needs. 16/03/2020

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Requirement Due date

27: Appointment of manager The registered provider must appoint a person to manage the children’s home if— 16/3/19 Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 5 there is no registered manager in respect of the home; and the registered provider—

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Requirement Due date

does not satisfy regulation 28; or is not, or does not intend to be, in day-to-day charge of the home.

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Requirement Due date

If the registered provider appoints a person to manage the home, the registered provider must, without delay, give HMCI notice of—

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Requirement Due date

the name of the person so appointed; and the date on which the appointment takes effect.

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Requirement Due date

(Regulation 27(1)(a)(b)(i, ii, iii)(2)(a)(b))

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Recommendations

 As set out in regulations 31-33, the registered person is responsible for maintaining good employment practice. They must ensure that recruitment, supervision and performance management of staff safeguard children and minimise potential risks to them. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 13.1) In particular, staff supervision should include reflecting on allegations made by a child. Staff should maintain records of clinical group supervisions in which children’s plans and staff’s working strategies are discussed.  The registered person should only accept placements for children where they are satisfied that the home can respond effectively to the child’s assessed needs as recorded in the child’s relevant plans and where they have fully considered the impact that the placement will have on the existing group of children. (‘Guide to the children’s homes regulations including the quality standards’, page

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Recommendations

56, paragraph 11.4) In particular, an impact risk assessment should be completed which details the risk a new child may present to those already living at the home and vice versa. This document must be accessible at the point of inspection.

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improvement to be good

Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 6 The shortfalls identified at this inspection in the areas of leadership and management and how well children are helped and protected have an impact on the overall judgement. The lack of a consistent manager has impacted on the effective monitoring of the home, which in turn has had an impact on staff and children.

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improvement to be good

Staff know children well and provide them with a safe and comfortable home to live in. Relationships between staff and children are positive and have helped children to grow in self-confidence and to develop the ability to understand and manage their behaviours. Parents, family members and social workers spoken to during the inspection supported this view.

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improvement to be good

Children’s day-to-day experiences at the home are positive because staff support them to take part in a wide range of fun activities. Staff arrange sports days and barbecues where children can invite their families, friends and social workers to join in Children develop an understanding of their wider community and compassion for others by undertaking charity work and fundraising events. Staff help children to remember the activities they have taken part in by taking photographs and collating them into scrap books.

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improvement to be good

Since the previous inspection, two children have left and successfully returned to live at their family home. One child has moved in and is settled and making progress. Leaders says that they have assessed the risk of this child moving into the home but do not have records to demonstrate this.

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improvement to be good

Both children living at the home have education placements. Staff work effectively with the education providers to ensure a consistency of approach, which benefits the children.

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improvement to be good

Leaders and managers have identified that children’s individual placement plans require improvement. Currently, they do not provide consistent good-quality guidance for staff about how to meet a child’s identified needs. However, these plans when looked at over time do demonstrate that children make progress.

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improvement to be good

Safeguarding records require improvement. They do not consistently provide a full record of actions taken by staff to safeguard children, including when advice has been sought from the designated officer and what that advice was. Information is stored in several different places, making them difficult to monitor effectively. Recently, these records have improved, but this needs to be embedded in practice. However, safeguarding concerns are reported to the appropriate persons in a timely manner, which protects children.

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improvement to be good

Staff are using their personal mobile phones to take photographs of children on activities. Currently, the policy states that staff must delete photographs once they have Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 7 been placed on the home’s system. Leaders and managers acknowledged that they are unable to guarantee that this is happening. This practice is potentially unsafe as it could blur professional boundaries placing children and staff at risk.

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improvement to be good

Behaviour is effectively managed. Records of incidents provide a clear description of events and actions taken by staff. Monitoring of these incidents has improved and led to a change in the consequences being given to children. These are now more restorative and focus on children learning to understand their behaviours and develop strategies to manage them.

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improvement to be good

Records of staff recruitment do not evidence safer recruitment practices being consistently followed. Two recruitment files were seen. One had no record of the interview.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

Currently, there is no manager in post. Leaders and managers have recruited people to this post, but none have been retained. Leaders and managers are undertaking a review of recent appointments to the manager’s post to include lessons learned from this, to improve the effectiveness of recruitment strategies.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

The home is managed by two experienced deputies, who are supported by one of the directors. Leaders and managers have a realistic view of the service and acknowledge that there has been some slippage. Effective actions are being taken to address this.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

At the previous inspection, four requirements and four recommendations were made. Leaders and managers have ensured that these have been met except for the recommendation regarding staff supervision, which, although there has been improvement, has been restated.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

Monitoring of the work undertaken at the home requires improvement. This has begun to improve, but further work is needed to connect points raised in monitoring to subsequent actions being taken. All monitoring needs to include a critical analysis of events, not just to be a process to promote development of the service.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

Staff levels at the home are good, and there is a mix of experienced and new staff. Since the previous inspection, there have been six occasions when staff in their probationary period have been left in sole charge of the home. Leaders and managers are on call, but this is not good practice because the capability of staff in their probationary period has not yet been confirmed by leaders and managers.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

Improvements have been made in the frequency and quality of staff supervisions. Further work is required to ensure that these sessions are of a consistently good quality and provide an effective tool for monitoring, reflecting on and developing staff practice. This includes reflection on allegation investigations. In addition, the staff team has Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 8 clinical supervision, which includes discussing the children and their individual plans. Currently, there are no minutes of these meetings or records of decisions made.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

Leaders and managers are not effectively challenging placing authorities where needed. Examples of this are when placing authorities do not provide children’s documents or complete return home interviews in a timely manner.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: requires improvement to be good

Complaints have been appropriately addressed, and good-quality records are kept. Leaders and manager have identified a need to have a suitably experienced person outside the organisation to look at complaints that are made against the directors, to ensure effective complaints’ 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 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: 2484443 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Impact for Change Ltd

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Great Warham Cottage, Beaford, Winkleigh, Devon EX19 8AB

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Inspector

Wendy Anderson, social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: 2484443 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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