Children's home run by New Horizons NW Limited

Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 1 Registered provider: New Horizons (NW) Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

The home is operated by a private organisation. It provides care for up to four children who may have social, emotional or learning needs.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager has been registered with Ofsted since the home opened in January 2021.

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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

Date of last inspection: 25 January 2022

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: good

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

25/01/2022 Full Good Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children live in a modern and welcoming home. They personalise their bedrooms to reflect their individual tastes and personalities.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children make good progress in many aspects of their lives. They receive individualised care and support that is tailored to meet their needs. One parent said, ‘They keep me up to date daily and I’m happy [name of child] is making progress.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The registered manager challenges local authorities to ensure that children’s educational needs are met. As a result, children are making good progress with their education attendance and attainment.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children struggle to build trusting relationships with all staff at the home. This affects children’s ability to talk openly with staff. As a result, conflict between children is sometimes unnoticed by staff. This affects children’s emotional well-being in the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff support children to attend their health appointments. Children register with doctors and dentists and access support from a wide range of other services. Children’s routine appointments and checks are up to date.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The staff team promotes equality and diversity in the home. The staff meet children’s cultural needs and challenge discriminatory language. This helps children learn how to respect others.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children enjoy regular family time with people who are important to them. This helps them to improve their relationships with each other. As a result, one child is going to return to live with their family.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children attend monthly group meetings to discuss their wishes and feelings. Staff consider their suggestions for activities, home improvements and cooking. This ensures that children feel listened to and helps to personalise their home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff carry out regular key-work sessions with children. However, staff do not do life- story work with children This is a missed opportunity for children to understand their backgrounds and to develop knowledge about where they come from.

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

Staff complete risk management plans for each child. This enables them to identify and understand children’s risks. Staff review plans regularly and discuss them in team meetings. This helps staff to maintain consistency when protecting children from harm. Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 4 Children do not go missing from home. Staff keep children safe by following robust missing-from-home protocols for each child. This ensures that staff can act quickly to prevent incidents from occurring.

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

Staff support children to stay safe online. Children attend key-work sessions to talk about safe and healthy relationships. This raises children’s awareness of online harm and helps them to stay safe.

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

Children have access to all areas of the home. However, children’s bedroom doors activate an alarm. This limits children’s privacy in the home.

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

The manager is aware of the risks associated with the location of the home. She reviews children’s needs to manage risks and to ensure that the location remains suitable. This helps children to avoid high-risk areas.

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

Staff enjoy regular training and opportunities to enhance their safeguarding knowledge and skills. This helps to keep children safe.

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

Children’s individual support plans contain guidance to help staff to respond to children’s behaviours. This includes, when necessary, staff intervening physically to keep children safe. However, following any intervention, leaders do not consistently carry out debriefs with staff within two days. As a result, learning from physical interventions is inconsistent.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The current registered manager is moving to another position in the company. An interim manager is being promoted from within the team. This helps to maintain consistency in the team while retaining the skills and experience of managers.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Staff feel supported by their leaders and managers. Staff attend supervision sessions to reflect on their performance. This enables them to discuss and share good practice with their manager and helps them to identify their training needs.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Managers and leaders build good relationships with children’s social workers. This helps to promote partnership working and secure better outcomes for children. A social worker said, ‘They’re easily one of the better placement providers I have worked with. I would definitely give them five out of five.’

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager provides a regular quality of care review. However, the views of children, their parents and placing authorities are not included in this report. This affects the analysis and evaluation of the quality of care.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager has good oversight of children’s case records and reviews them regularly. However, staff sometimes record information using judgemental language about children. This can be unhelpful to children and stigmatise them. Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 5 The registered manager keeps the home’s statement of purpose under review. This ensures that the document is a true reflection of the home’s details and current arrangements. Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 6

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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, the 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 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.

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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

meet each child’s behavioural and emotional needs, as set out in the child’s relevant plans;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to develop socially aware behaviour;

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Requirement Due date

encourage each child to take responsibility for the child’s behaviour, in accordance with the child’s age and understanding;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to develop and practise skills to resolve conflicts positively and without harm to anyone;

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Requirement Due date

communicate to each child expectations about the child’s behaviour and ensure that the child understands those expectations in accordance with the child’s age and understanding;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to understand, in a way that is appropriate according to the child’s age and understanding, personal, sexual and social relationships, and how those relationships can be supportive or harmful;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to develop the understanding and skills to recognise or withdraw from a damaging, exploitative or 21 October 2022 Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 7 harmful relationship;

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Requirement Due date

strive to gain each child’s respect and trust;

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Requirement Due date

understand how children’s previous experiences and present emotions can be communicated through behaviour and have the competence and skills to interpret these and develop positive relationships with children;

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Requirement Due date

de-escalate confrontations with or between children, or potentially violent behaviour by children;

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Requirement Due date

understand and communicate to children that bullying is unacceptable; and

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Requirement Due date

have the skills to recognise incidents or indications of bullying and how to deal with them. (Regulation 11 (1)(a)(b)(c) (2)(a)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(v)(vi)(vii)(viii)(ix)(xi)(xii)(xiii))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, that staff develop consistent relationships with children to enable them to identify any issues between children and quickly resolve those issues. Additionally, that children’s behaviours, whenever possible, are managed without the need for physical intervention.

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Requirement Due date

the privacy of children is appropriately protected;

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Requirement Due date

children can access all appropriate areas of the children’s home’s premises; and

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Requirement Due date

any limitation placed on a child’s privacy or access to any area of the home’s premises—

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Requirement Due date

is intended to safeguard each child accommodated in the home;

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Requirement Due date

is kept under review and, if necessary, revised; and

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Requirement Due date

allows children as much freedom as is possible when balanced against the need to protect them and keep them safe. (Regulation 21 (a)(b)(c)(i)(ii)(iv))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, that alarms and sensors on children’s bedroom 21 October 2022 Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 8 doors are only used in accordance with this regulation or otherwise removed.

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Requirement Due date

within 48 hours of the use of the measure, the registered person, or a person who is authorised by the registered person to do so ("the authorised person")—

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Requirement Due date

has spoken to the user about the measure; and has signed the record to confirm it is accurate. (Regulation 35 (3)(b)(i)(ii)) 21 October 2022

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Requirement Due date

In order to complete a quality of care review the registered person must establish and maintain a system for monitoring, reviewing and evaluating—

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Requirement Due date

the quality of care provided for children;

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Requirement Due date

the feedback and opinions of children about the children’s home, its facilities and the quality of care they receive in it; and

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Requirement Due date

any actions that the registered person considers necessary in order to improve or maintain the quality of care provided for children.

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Requirement Due date

The system referred to in paragraph (2) must provide for ascertaining and considering the opinions of children, their parents, placing authorities and staff. (Regulation 45 (2)(a)(b)(c) (5)) 31 January 2023

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that staff support life-story work or similar with children, to help them understand their background and experiences. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 16, paragraph 3.14)  The registered person should ensure that staff record information on individual children in a non-stigmatising way that will be helpful to the child. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4) Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 9

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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 for children’s home: 2614703 10

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: New Horizons (NW) Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Unit 12, Riversway Business Village, Navigation Way, Preston, Lancashire PR2 2YP

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Children’s home details

Responsible individual: Natalie Waterhouse

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Inspector

Mark Woodbridge, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: 2614703 11 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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