Children's Home run by Care Today Parallel Parents in Leeds

Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 1 SC403890 Registered provider: The Partnership of Care Today

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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 four children or young people. The home specialises in caring for children and young people who may have emotional and/or behavioural difficulties including, but not exclusively, mild to moderate learning disabilities.

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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: outstanding

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

12/03/2019 Full Outstanding 12/09/2017 Full Good 23/02/2017 Interim Sustained effectiveness 15/11/2016 Full Outstanding Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children and young people living in this home have been here for a significant amount of time, allowing them to feel safe and have a sense of permanence. They receive good care from a stable staff team and have relationships based on mutual respect and trust. Staff invest their time and attention in the children to help them build secure and lasting attachments, which form the basis of their ongoing progress and development.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

One young person has left since the last inspection. She moved into semi-independent living, where she is caring for her new baby. This is a very positive transition, which was the result of the young person being supported to learn the skills needed to manage not only her own care, but that of her baby too. The young person visited the home during the inspection and told the inspector: ‘When I came here, it changed my life. The people here are my family.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff promote the importance of education and all the children and young people are attending school and making good progress. The children and young people are in specialist provisions and accessing additional support. There are good working relationships and effective lines of communication, which allow information to be shared, ensuring a consistent approach for each child and young person. As a result, children and young people’s behaviours are well managed and negative behaviours continue to reduce.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children and young people report that they are happy in the home, they get on well with the staff and one child said it is ‘the best place in the world to live’. The children and young people are supported to develop a positive self-view. Through their relationships and key-working they are learning to recognise and better manage their emotions. Children and young people are making progress in all areas of their development. All of their health needs are met, and staff ensure that the children and young people have access to targeted help and support when appropriate.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff work hard to ensure that children and young people are able to maintain appropriate relationships with their families. Contact is supported and when there is a need to increase that contact, staff advocate on behalf of children and young people to meet that need. Staff have helped one child to re-establish his relationships with his sister and birth mother. This is helping him to have a better sense of his family history and identity.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children and young people are able to experience activities during the holidays in the good weather. However, during the colder weather there is little evidence of staff engaging the children in regular activities. The children would benefit from a planned approach to encourage them to pursue hobbies or to be challenged by new experiences, which may unlock new interests and talents. Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 4

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

The staff response when children and young people go missing is well coordinated to prioritise them being found and the risk of harm is minimised. Children and young people are offered an interview when they return home and staff are proactive in identifying triggers for missing episodes, addressing those triggers effectively. For one child, their incidents of missing from home were linked to the separation from their family. Staff have addressed this through the social worker to increase the time the child spends with their family, which in turn eliminated the missing episodes. No children and young people have been missing from the home since July 2019.

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

Children and young people are not at risk from substance misuse or criminal behaviour. They are supported to access appropriate leisure time in the community and keep in touch with staff when they are out. Children and young people are supported to take age-appropriate risks and develop friendships in the local area.

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

Children and young people feel safe in the home. They are secure in their relationships with staff and are supported to express their anger and frustration in increasingly positive ways. This has resulted in the use of restraints reducing considerably. There has been only one restraint occurring in the last six months.

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

Key-work sessions are undertaken regularly to enable children and young people to learn about risk and how to keep themselves safer. One of the young people is pregnant to another young person; however, there is a great deal of evidence that key-working has been carried out around sexual health, safe sex and appropriate relationships. There has been a multi-agency approach to encourage children to access contraception and strategies implemented to ensure that they are monitored in the home.

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

On one occasion, information was shared with staff that identified significant risk to a child from potential sexual exploitation on social media. Information was not recorded on the risk assessment and the recording of this incident does not fully capture the details. Staff reported the incident to the social worker and undertook work with the young person to raise their understanding of the risks, increasing the safety around the young person. However, due to the omission on the risk assessment, staff may not have been clear as to the concerns and potential impact on that young person.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager is currently on leave and the deputy manager is covering during this time. The management of the home and the staff team is extremely well established, and most of its members have been in post for many years. This offers stable and consistent care to the children. This stability contributes significantly to the good outcomes and progress observed during this inspection.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager has high expectations for the children. There is an anticipation that children will engage in education and are supported to make progress. The staff seek to build effective working relationships with professionals and parents to secure positive Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 5 outcomes for children. When they are not satisfied with the plans, responses or progress, staff are proactive in challenging others and advocating for children in their best interests. Child-centred decisions contribute to a settled environment where children can thrive.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Staff attend meetings for children and young people and feed back to multi-agency forums, contributing to care plans for children. Important information is not always fully shared in these meetings and therefore not included in the care planning for children and young people. This may have limited the support offered to children and young people, which could in turn impact on their outcomes.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager and staff benefit from access to supervision on a regular basis. Staff report feeling well supported and able to have open discussions with the manager at any time. This shows that staff are able to discuss issues, problems and developments and to address practice. There are regular meetings to reflect on practice as a team and consider the key targets for the next week or two. However, there is no discussion about the children and young people, their needs and risks or the effect the staff have on their day-to-day experiences.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The report on the quality of care in the home is detailed and evaluative. The effective monitoring tools implemented give a clear understanding of the performance of the home. The manager has a good understanding of the strengths and areas for development and there are actions identified. The report could be strengthened by focusing more on improving progress and outcomes for children. Where actions are identified, this needs a prompt and proactive approach to addressing repairs and improving the overall appearance of the home.

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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

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. (Regulation 5 (a))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that all information about a child is recorded and shared in multi-agency meetings. Where this has 13/03/2020 Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 6 been completed, but not recorded in the minutes, this should be raised with the responsible agency within timescales.

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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 that staff—

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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;

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Requirement Due date

take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare. (Regulation 12 (1)(2)(a)(i)(vi))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that all risks are explicit on the risk assessment so that staff are aware of the concerns and therefore able to safeguard the children where required. 13/03/2020

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Recommendations

 Children’s homes’ staff should seek to identify and provide appropriate opportunities for children to develop themselves in accordance with their wishes and feelings and as part of the home’s plan for their care. Each child’s talents and interests should be understood and nurtured, with children selecting activities based on their personal preferences and abilities, so far as is reasonable. Staff should also support children to try activities that are ‘new’ for them, where appropriate. (‘Guide to the children’s home regulations including the quality standards’, page 31, paragraph 6.4)

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Recommendations

 The registered person must have systems in place so that all staff, including the manager, receive supervision of their practice from an appropriately qualified and experienced professional, which allows them to reflect on their practice and the needs of the children assigned to their care. Professionally qualified staff employed by the home, e.g. teachers or social workers, should be provided with relevant professional or clinical supervision by an appropriately qualified and experienced professional. (‘Guide to the children’s home regulations including the quality standards’, page 61, paragraph 13.2)

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Recommendations

In particular, ensure that all children living in the home are discussed, reflecting on their needs and the impact of staff on their overall well-being and progress.

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Recommendations

 Regulation 45 sets out requirements for the registered person to have a system in place which allows them to monitor the matters set out in the regulation at least once every six months; also see regulation 13(2)(h) (the leadership and Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 7 management standard). The registered person should undertake a review that focuses on the quality of the care provided by the home, the experiences of children living there and the impact the care is having on outcomes and improvements for the children. Reviews should be underpinned by the Quality Standards as described in regulations 5 to 14. (‘Guide to the children’s home regulations including the quality standards’, page 64, paragraph 15.2)

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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: SC403890 8

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Lansdowne House, 85 Buxton Road, Stockport, Cheshire SK2 6LR

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Inspector

Deb Duffy: social care inspector Inspection report children’s home: SC403890 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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