John Greenwood Shipman Centre

Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 1 SC465257 Registered provider: Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This is an eight-bedded short-break service for children with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and associated healthcare needs. The service is managed by a healthcare foundation trust. It is also registered with the Care Quality Commission because staff carry out some healthcare tasks.

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Information about this children’s home

The home is led by a manager who is registered with Ofsted.

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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 requires improvement to be 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: good

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

29/06/2021 Full Good 17/09/2019 Full Good 09/07/2018 Full Good 12/01/2017 Interim Improved effectiveness Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children are happy and enjoy their stays. A parent said, ‘My son has flourished since being there, gaining independence and really enjoying his stays away from home.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children are very well supported to start their short breaks and to return home at the end of their break. When a child moved into a long-stay children’s home, staff used short, illustrated stories that describe social situations to help and support him with the move. The manager and staff were flexible with the dates that the child came for his short break. This enabled staff from both homes and the child to make visits. A manager from the home the child moved to said, ‘Having known people work alongside new people gave [the child] greater confidence and allowed new staff to witness good practice and learn what worked well. When he moved into our home, this worked incredibly well, and I think this is largely down to all the pre- planning and teamwork that had been put into place.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children access a wealth of activities. The home is very well resourced with art and craft materials, books, games and toys. Children also have a range of outdoor play equipment, such as a sunken trampoline and a roundabout. There is also a sensory room and soft playroom. Children have enjoyed trips out to theme parks, the cinema and bowling among many other places.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff spoke with warmth about the children and know them well. They build warm and nurturing relationships with children. Children respond well to staff and have made good progress in developing their life skills.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff ensure that children attend school. They are up and ready to attend by the time the school transport arrives. On a few occasions, school transport has been stopped for a period of time for some children. Staff have subsequently stepped in and taken the children to school until school transport restarted. Staff ensured that children did not lose out on education.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children’s achievements are celebrated through praise from staff or via the ‘WOW!’ board, where children’s achievements are displayed. Staff have an adequate understanding of how children communicate. For example, children will choose from a selection of symbols to indicate what they would like for their dinner or snack, or they lead staff to what they want. However, staff would benefit from training in a range of communication systems to enable more effective communication. The manager plans to book further training in this area.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The home is a large building with a good space outdoors for children to play. There are good communal spaces in the home. The home has undergone some refurbishment, and more is planned but has not yet been agreed. The environment lacks warmth, but staff are trying to make it more homely. For example, new curtains are due imminently, and new sofas have been purchased. However, staff Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 4 wearing masks, scrubs and lanyards adds to the lack of warmth in the environment. Consequently, the environment is not currently homely.

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improvement to be good

Staff have not recognised risks and hazards in the garden when children are playing and at the meal table. Once risks and hazards have been identified, staff quickly resolve the issue. For example, a rope cradle swing was coming apart and a child climbed onto it to play. Once the hazard was pointed out to the member of staff, the child was asked to get off the swing and the swing was removed. It was replaced the next day. Another example is when a child was swinging on the back legs of a chair. The child was allowed to continue to do this for some time. Furthermore, the foam from a swing seat was coming away, with large chunks missing. A child had previously tried to eat the foam from this swing a few months before, but it had not been replaced. Children were not stopped from overloading their spoons with food or putting food into their mouths before finishing the first mouthful. This could be a choking hazard.

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improvement to be good

Generally, the children are well behaved. They are happy and listen to staff. Incidents do not occur often, but they are managed well. Staff are good at using de- escalation techniques. Consequently, physical intervention is used infrequently and always at a low level. There is good management oversight of all incidents.

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improvement to be good

Children are not given the opportunity to tell staff how they feel about incidents they have been involved in, particularly those involving physical intervention. Furthermore, staff who have been involved in incidents do not formally review the incident with a senior member of staff, reflecting on what went well and what could have been done better. This would help with staff development and learning to prevent future incidents.

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improvement to be good

Staff have a good understanding of safeguarding procedures. Safeguarding incidents have been managed well and shared with appropriate external agencies.

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good

The registered manager is now qualified with a level 5 diploma in leadership and management and is also a registered nurse. The deputy manager, supported by the service manager, has been covering while the registered manager has been absent for a prolonged period of time. The registered manager is due back imminently.

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good

Sickness continues to be an issue. Staff cover shifts and they also use bank staff and, occasionally, agency workers. On occasion, children’s stays have been cancelled to ensure that staff can maintain the correct staffing levels for each child. The home is almost fully staffed, and there is a core team of established staff. Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 5 Staff receive good training opportunities to ensure that they have the right skills to meet the needs of the children. However, staff would benefit from training in how children communicate.

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good

Children’s care plans are not child-friendly. Children have not contributed to their plans and would struggle to understand them. Parents and social workers have not signed some plans to say they agree with the content. However, children’s care plans do provide useful information for staff, but they are set out in a medicalised format. The plan does not include information about education or transport, although this can be found in each child’s file. Furthermore, it is not clear when some plans were last updated.

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good

Some key documents have incorrect or out-of-date information in them. For example, some ‘A&E grab sheets’ have incorrect information about medication. It is important for medical professionals to know the correct medication that a child is taking should they need to go to hospital. Photos of children on documents about actions to take when children go missing from care are of the children when they were much younger, and so they are often no longer a good likeness. If a child goes missing, it is important to have an up-to-date photo of the child to help the police find them. Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 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. (Regulation 12 (1) (2)(a)(i))

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Requirement Due date

This specifically refers to staff not recognising when a child may be at risk of harm and not taking preventative action quickly and consistently. 28 March 2023

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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

that the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed, furnished and maintained so as to protect each child from avoidable hazards to the child’s health. (Regulation 12 (1) (2)(d))

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Requirement Due date

This specifically relates to hazards around the home that have not been previously identified and removed. 28 March 2023

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Requirement Due date

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

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Requirement Due date

promotes their welfare. 28 March 2023 Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 7 In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to—

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Requirement Due date

understand the impact that the quality of care provided in the home is having on the progress and experiences of each child and use this understanding to inform the development of the quality of care provided in the home. (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b) (2)(f))

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Requirement Due date

This specifically refers to the continued wearing of masks around children who struggle with communication. The continued wearing of masks may hinder children’s communication with staff. Furthermore, the wearing of scrubs and identification cards on lanyards does not provide a warm and nurturing environment for children, and lanyards could be a hazard.

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Requirement Due date

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

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Requirement Due date

In particular, the standard in paragraph (1) requires the registered person to—

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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. (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b) (2)(h))

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Requirement Due date

This specifically refers to key documents that are out of date or incorrect. 28 March 2023

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that any child who has been restrained is given the opportunity to express their feelings about their experience of the restraint as soon as is practicable, ideally within 24 hours of the restraint incident, taking the age of the child and the circumstances of the restraint into account. In some cases, children may need longer to work through their feelings, so a record that the child has talked about their feelings should be made no longer than five days after the incident of restraint (regulation 35 (3)(c)). Children should be encouraged to add their views and comments to the record of restraint. Children Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 8 should be offered the opportunity to access an advocacy support to help them with this (regulation 7 (2)(b)(iii)). ('Guide to the children's homes regulations including the quality standards', page 49, paragraph 9.60)

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Recommendations

 The registered person should support staff to be ambitious for every child in the home and to gain skills and experience that enable them to actively support each child to achieve their potential. This means having a good understanding of communication aids that support children’s personal methods of communicating with staff. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 52, paragraph 10.5)  The registered person should ensure that children are encouraged by staff to see the home’s records as ‘living documents’, supporting them to view and contribute to the record in a way that reflects their voice on a regular basis. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 58, paragraph 11.19)  The registered person should ensure that staff are familiar with the home’s policies on record-keeping. Information about the child must always be recorded

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Recommendations

in a way that will be helpful to the child. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4)  The registered person should ensure that staff are supervised in line with the home’s workforce development plan and statement of purpose. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.8)

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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: SC465257 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Sudborough House, St. Mary’s Hospital, 77 London Road, Kettering, Northamptonshire NN15 7PW

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Inspector

Joanne Vyas, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: SC465257 10 and inspects 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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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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