Children's Home run by Institute of Integrated Systemic Therapy in Norfolk

Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 1 SC065792 Registered provider: Institute of Integrated Systemic Therapy Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This home is run by a charitable organisation. It specialises in the care of up to eight children with severe social and emotional difficulties and attachment difficulties that are rooted in early life trauma.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager registered with Ofsted in January 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 requires improvement to be 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: 20 December 2021

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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: SC065792 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

20/12/2021 Full Good 14/10/2019 Full Outstanding 09/01/2019 Full Outstanding 28/11/2017 Full Outstanding Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

This home provides good-quality care and a comfortable and spacious environment for children to live in. Since the last inspection, two children have moved on and two children have moved into the home. At the time of this inspection, seven children were living at the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children say that they feel safe and listened to by staff. The staff understand children and help them to make progress. One child said he would like to stay at the home until he can live independently. The staff have supported him to develop cooking skills. The staff encourage children to think about their futures and prepare for independence.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children live in a home where practice is underpinned by a therapeutic model of care. The interactions between staff and children are good. Staff are skilled at understanding the children’s feelings and behaviours. This allows children to express how they feel in a safe environment. Children are valued and understood by the staff, and this helps them to make good progress.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children are encouraged to individualise their bedrooms. Each child’s bedroom reflects the child’s unique personality. There are hand-painted characters of children’s choice on a large mural on the living-room wall. Consequently, children have a good sense of ownership and belonging.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children enjoy activities that increase their social and emotional skills and allow them to have fun. One child who likes to write fiction has received guidance and encouragement from a local author.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children are encouraged to attend education. Some children attend full time. Online education is provided for children who are not at school. However, there are not enough educational activities in between online lessons. One child is receiving online and home tutoring. This child has been out of school since October 2022.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children are registered with primary healthcare services; however, one child has not yet received age-appropriate immunisations. This could make them vulnerable to childhood illnesses. Interventions to support specific behaviours for one child were not timely. This child’s placement ended as the home could not keep the child safe.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children have high levels of supervision from staff. However, these levels are not regularly reviewed and could leave children feeling restricted by the number of staff. Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 4

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improvement to be good

On one occasion, inexperienced staff were sent to manage a child who frequently went missing from home and who was displaying aggressive behaviour. This resulted in the child assaulting staff and then driving away alone in the home’s car. The car only stopped when it was out of range of the keyless entry system. This incident could have resulted in serious injury. A thorough investigation took place and staff involved were debriefed. However, except for changing the home’s car to one that needs a key, the learning from the incident and how it was shared with staff is unclear. There has been no follow-up with staff in supervision.

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improvement to be good

Children receive regular key-work sessions. These explore children’s wishes and feelings. However, these sessions lack a structured focus and fail to address individual risks to children, such as sexually harmful behaviours and child criminal exploitation. The lack of focus does not help children to understand and manage risk, to keep themselves and others safe.

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improvement to be good

Children’s individual risks are not always understood by staff. There are gaps in children’s plans and risk assessments around the use of mobile phones. Staff are unaware of one child’s risks of criminal exploitation. The child has access to a phone sim card without parental controls or safety restrictions. This child is at risk of online grooming. Children’s risk assessments contain conflicting information about mobile phone use and how this should be managed. This means that staff are not able to respond to these risks to ensure children’s safety.

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improvement to be good

One notification of a serious incident was not received by Ofsted until seven days after the incident. This limited Ofsted’s oversight of children’s safety at the home.

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improvement to be good

Children who go missing from home are routinely reported to the police and the placing authority. There is a detailed joint missing-from-care protocol with the police. The staff attend strategy discussions when there are known additional risks such as criminal exploitation. This wider multi-agency oversight enables sharing of information to inform planned responses to children who go missing from the home.

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improvement to be good

The number of physical interventions has reduced. Reviews of incidents show clear management oversight and identified learning following incidents. One incident when a child was placed in a ground hold identified the need for staff to consider other strategies to prevent the level of escalation. Good managerial oversight means that children experience fewer physical interventions.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager is experienced and knows the staff and children well. She has high aspirations for children to achieve. Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 5 Social workers said that communication with the staff is good. A parent said that she can see the positive progress that her child has made since moving to the home. The manager escalates concerns to external professionals when necessary.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Managers have completed an internal quality assurance review of supervision records. This ensures that staff have regular supervision and that discussions support staff development. New staff complete a comprehensive induction programme. However, the supervision records are not routinely signed by the member of staff.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Leaders and managers have completed an organisational review of the use of physical interventions at the home. This is an ongoing process to change the organisational response to physical interventions.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Staff training is of varying quality. The manager acknowledged that child exploitation training had been generic. Staff did receive specific, face-to-face training in criminal exploitation in December 2022.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Internal scrutiny and evaluation reports provide a good overview of the progress of children and the development of the home. This ensures that progress can be tracked and any shortfalls identified. However, the feedback from children is not captured in the report. Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 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, 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 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;

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Requirement Due date

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

manage relationships between children to prevent them from harming each other;

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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

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. (Regulation 12 (1) (2)(a)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(vi)(b)) 28 February 2023

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that when children placed in a home are not participating in education because they have been excluded or are not at school for some other reason, the registered person and staff must work closely with the placing authority so that the child is supported and enabled to resume full-time education as soon as possible. In the interim, the child should be supported to Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 7 sustain or regain their confidence in education and be engaged in suitable structured activities. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 28, paragraph 5.15)  The registered person should ensure that staff understand and help children to understand what makes a healthy, nurturing relationship. Staff should be skilled to recognise the signs and provide support to children in danger of, or involved in, damaging relationships with others. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations,

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Recommendations

including the quality standards’, page 38, paragraph 8.10)  The registered person should ensure that children are free to move around the home without high levels of staff supervision. Restraint includes restricting a child’s liberty of movement. Restrictions such as these, and all other restrictions of liberty of movement, should be recorded as restraint. (‘Guide to the Children’s Home Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 47, paragraph 9.42)  The registered person should ensure that staff have access to specialist training, to help them provide additional support to children and to support their training needs. (‘Guide to the Children’s Home Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.11)  The registered person should actively seek independent scrutiny of the home and make best use of information from independent and internal monitoring (including under regulations 44 and 45) to ensure continuous improvement.

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Recommendations

Reports should capture the views of children, parents and professionals. (‘Guide to the Children’s Home Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 55, paragraph 10.24)  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 Home Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 56, paragraph 11.4)  The registered person should ensure that notification of serious incidents under regulation 40 (4) requires the registered person to notify Ofsted and other relevant persons if one of the situations specified in regulation 40 (4)(a)-(d) occurs, or if there is an incident relating to the protection, safeguarding or welfare

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Recommendations

of a child living in the home which the registered person considers to be serious (40 (4)(e)). (‘Guide to the Children’s Home Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 63, paragraph 14.10)

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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) Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 8 Regulations 2015 and the ‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’. Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Institute of Integrated Systemic Therapy

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: 210 Borough High Street, London SE1 1JX

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Inspectors

Kamal Bhamra, Social Care Inspector Tom McGhee, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: SC065792 10 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 looked after children, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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