2615342.

Inspection report children's home: 2615342 1 2615342. Registered provider: Witherslack Group Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This is a privately owned home that provides care for up to seven children. These children may have faced adverse childhood experiences resulting in trauma.

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Information about this children’s home

The registered manager holds a level 5 qualification.

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Information about this children’s home

Due to COVID-19 (coronavirus), at the request of the Secretary of State, we suspended all routine inspections of social care providers on 17 March 2020.

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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 outstanding

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good

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

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good

Date of last inspection: not previously inspected

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: not applicable

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: not applicable Inspection report children's home: 2615342 2

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children develop trusted and secure relationships with staff who care about them and know them well. Children receive bespoke care and support that is tailored to their individual needs. The inspirational registered manager has embedded a ‘can do’ culture in the home. Children grow in confidence and self-esteem because they receive regular encouragement and praise. Staff take time to read bedtime stories to children. On occasions, the registered manager visits the home to give a child a bedtime hug and kiss goodnight. A parent told the inspector, ‘I absolutely love the home. Staff are excellent. They spend a lot of time with my children. They are treated as individuals.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children attend school and have excellent attendance records. Staff work well with teachers to review children’s progress and set targets. The registered manager is a strong advocate for children. When necessary, she challenges teachers to ensure that children receive appropriate support and guidance. As a result, children benefit from consistent care, in line with their needs.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff enthusiastically support children to engage in a range of positive social and recreational activities. These include trips to theme parks and spontaneous games of football with staff. Staff are keen to introduce children to new interests and build on their existing talents and skills. For example, one child enjoys his new hobby of horse riding and is showing exceptional promise. Another child, a talented footballer, is planning to join a local team. In addition, staff support children to develop their independence skills. For example, one child delivers a local paper round. This variety of opportunities helps children to build their identity and increase their confidence and self-esteem.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff work hard to ensure that children spend time with those who are important to them. They develop positive relationships with parents and carers. Family members are welcomed into the home and receive regular updates from staff. This inclusive approach helps children to build positive family relationships. A parent told the inspector, ‘Staff make me feel so welcome. If I get a sense that [the child] is upset, I call the staff and they support him straight away.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children have access to a therapeutic team which assesses their complex emotional needs. It plays an integral role in overseeing children’s day-to-day care and the quality of staff practice. Therapists work closely with staff to ensure that they understand each child’s needs and provide appropriate and effective care. The registered manager skilfully utilises the therapeutic team’s specialist knowledge. For example, she organises a range of staff workshops to explore children’s behaviours and progress. This supports staff to understand the context of children’s behaviour. As a result, children receive well-informed and joined-up care. Inspection report children's home: 2615342 3 Children play an integral role in the day-to-day running of the home. Staff use a variety of means to capture children’s views, including daily discussion, one-to-one support and children’s meetings. The registered manager listens closely to children’s

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

views and makes the necessary changes to their home and care. Furthermore, children are heavily involved in more complex aspects of their care. For example, staff support children to create their own behaviour support plans. This child-centred approach helps children to understand their care and develop a sense of ownership of their plans.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The home environment is bright, vibrant, and well maintained. Children’s bedrooms are decorated to their personal tastes. Pictures that capture happy memories and enjoyable events are on show in the home. During the inspection, children enjoyed playing games consoles with staff and playing football in the garden. A child told the inspector, ‘I like it here, it’s really good. The best bit is the staff. I get to do loads of stuff.’ Children thrive in this positive and relaxed environment and have a sense of pride in their home.

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

Overall, staff identify and understand the risks for each child. Individualised and up- to-date risk assessments contain clear guidance for staff to manage risk. Children work alongside staff to review their levels of risk and discuss strategies to keep them safe. As a result, children learn new strategies to help them settle when they feel agitated or anxious. For some children, this is significant progress from their starting points. However, one child’s behaviour management plan did not contain significant information from his social worker relating to the child’s past. This recording shortfall did not have an impact on the child’s care. The registered manager rectified this shortfall during the inspection.

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

Children make good and sustained progress in reducing their risk-taking behaviour. They rarely go missing from the home, and incidents of challenging behaviour continue to decrease over time. Staff provide children with consistent structure and routine. Their practice strikes a good balance between enforcing boundaries and rewarding positive behaviour. Staff know children well and use their intuition to understand when children feel unsettled. In addition, staff use a range of individualised approaches for children. For example, staff use a quick reward box for one child, to reinforce his positive behaviours. During a recent review, a child told professionals, ‘I feel I am much better behaved now, and staff can trust me much more than before. I feel proud of myself.’

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

Staff use a range of measures to help children to understand their behaviours and how these may impact on others. For example, when some children had targeted their peers by making insulting and threatening comments, the registered manager and staff took swift action to address these concerns. They provided children with individual and group support to help them understand the impact of bullying. In addition, staff worked hard to rebuild relationships between some children. This helped children to develop a greater awareness of their behaviour and to use new Inspection report children's home: 2615342 4 strategies to manage difficult situations. As a result, relationships between children improved significantly and challenging incidents have decreased over time.

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

In the majority of instances, staff provide children with good quality and regular one-to-one support in line with their needs. This helps children to understand their risks. However, the quality of some of these sessions is variable. This means that on occasions, children receive inconsistent support. The registered manager is taking steps to address this shortfall. For example, a member of staff will take lead responsibility for the quality of children’s one-to-one support. In addition, the registered manager is planning to change the format of one-to-one support sessions in order to improve their quality.

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

Staff use targeted interventions to help children to calm when they are agitated or anxious. As a last resort, appropriately trained staff use restraint if children are likely to hurt themselves or others, or significantly damage property. Staff take the time to sensitively review these incidents alongside children. This helps children and staff to learn from these incidents and to develop new strategies to manage challenging incidents.

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

Overall, staff have a good understanding of the home’s safeguarding procedures. They work closely with staff from the co-located home to manage and review risks. In the majority of cases, staff work hard to manage these risks and, when appropriate, provide some children with well-planned joint activities with their peers from the co-located home. However, on one occasion, poor staff communication meant that opportunities were missed to de-escalate a challenging incident involving children from both homes. As a result, some children went missing from the home for a brief period. Staff provided a robust response and worked alongside the police to locate the children. The registered manager has completed a ‘lessons learned’ exercise with staff to address these shortfalls.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager has made a positive impact on the lives of children and staff. Her tenacity, enthusiasm and innovation inspire staff to provide children with highly individualised care. Staff feel emboldened by this ethos. A staff member told the inspector, ‘I feel that we [staff] are in an amazing place. Staff look forward to coming to work. The manager is always speaking to us, always encouraging us.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Staff are passionate about children in their care. They continually reflect on children’s progress and use staff meetings to effectively challenge and develop their practice. The registered manager and staff introduce new ideas to improve the quality-of-care children receive. This includes a range of new communication tools and child-friendly plans, in line with children’s individual needs. As a result, children’s care continues to evolve and improve.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Staff provide children with warm and nurturing care. They work effectively as a team, utilising the individual skills of staff to address children’s changing needs. This means that children have access to staff who have a range of expertise. Staff Inspection report children's home: 2615342 5 demonstrate a good knowledge of children and provide them with well-thought-out and consistent care.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Staff benefit from a healthy learning environment. Discussions in supervision sessions and staff meetings strike a healthy balance between effective challenge and support. Training programmes mirror children’s individual, and often complex, behavioural needs. The registered manager provides staff with additional in-house training to enhance their knowledge and skills. For example, recent training focused on how staff will support a child’s final session of family time with their sibling. These innovative and creative ideas improve the quality-of-care children receive. A member of staff told the inspector, ‘We can sit together and challenge our practice. Managers are really supportive. When we need them, they are right by our side. I couldn’t ask for a better manager. The staff team are like an extended family. The children can sense this.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager uses a range of internal audits to monitor children’s progress. These help her to identify strengths and areas for development. The registered manager closely scrutinises patterns of behaviour and evaluates these to improve the quality of care that children receive. In addition, the registered manager invites a variety of internal professionals to audit various aspects of children’s care. For example, auditors regularly complete unannounced visits to the home to assess the presentation of the environment. These strong monitoring systems mean that the quality of children’s care is continually evolving and improving.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

Partnership working is exceptionally strong. The registered manager recognises the importance of maintaining strong relationships with partner agencies. She attends regular internal meetings with therapists, teachers and staff to closely scrutinise children’s progress. She uses this learning to continually evolve children’s care and generate creative ideas. Feedback from professionals is highly complimentary. An independent reviewing officer told the inspector, ‘I am pleased how staff progress their [children’s] care plans in a timely way. It is reassuring that staff are proactive in implementing the therapeutic support children need.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: outstanding

The registered manager rigorously challenges other professionals to ensure that children receive the support that they need. For example, when she identified that a child was unsettled in school, the registered manager met with teachers to review the child’s behaviour management support in school. She encouraged teachers to use alternative strategies in line with the child’s needs. On other occasions, the registered manager challenges mental health services to make sure children receive timely specialist support. This tenacious and child-centred approach makes children feel valued. Inspection report children's home: 2615342 6

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that records of children’s one-to-one support are of consistent quality. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.3)

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that children’s behaviour management plans fully reflect their needs. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations including the quality standards’, page 42, paragraph 9.5)

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Information about this inspection

Inspectors have looked closely at the experiences and progress of children and young people, 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: 2615342 7

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Witherslack Group Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Lupton Tower, Lupton, Carnforth LA6 2PR

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Inspector

Gareth Leckey, Social Care Inspector Inspection report children's home: 2615342 8 to 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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