Children's Home run by Serenity Specialist Care Ltd in Birmingham

Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 1 Registered provider: Serenity Specialist Care Ltd Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

A small private company owns this home. It provides care for up to two children, aged from 10 to 17 years old, who experience emotional and/or behavioural difficulties.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager has been registered with Ofsted since August 2023.

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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: 7 December 2022

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: good

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Enforcement action since last inspection: none

Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

07/12/2022 Full Good 28/09/2021 Full Good Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Since the last inspection, three children have moved into the home and four children have moved on from the home. One child moved on to supported accommodation and one child returned to the care of their family, in line with their care plans. Two of the children moved out of the home as staff were unable to keep them safe. At the time of this inspection, one child was living in the home. This child has lived in the home for nine months. Most of the children have made progress from their original starting points while living in the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Inspectors observed positive relationships between the child living in the home and staff. The child said that they were happy living in the home and had staff they could talk to if they had any worries or concerns. When inspectors asked what the best thing is about living in the home, the child said, ‘it’s chill’, and would rate the home a ‘nine out of 10’.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff support children to access appropriate education to meet their needs. When children have difficulties attending school, staff work closely with education professionals to ensure that children are supported back into school as soon as possible. The child living in the home is due to be the lead in the school play. This has been a positive incentive and supported the child to improve his attendance and enjoyment of school.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff encourage children to take part in a wide range of activities, try new things and develop hobbies and interests. These include football clubs, after-school drama club, youth club and days trips out. Sharing activities enables children to grow in confidence and improve their self-esteem and social skills.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff support children with all their health needs. Staff support children to attend routine health appointments and access specialist physical and mental health support, when required. The manager ensures that staff receive specialist training for children’s known health conditions. This ensures that staff understand children’s health needs and promotes positive health outcomes for children.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff actively promote time for children to spend with their families and friends. Children have re-established relationships with their family members through this support from staff. One child now has regular overnight stays with his family. The child’s parent said the home had been supportive in helping improve their family time arrangements.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff take children’s views seriously. The child said they feels listened to. The manager and staff regularly seek children’s views, through children’s meetings, key-work sessions and direct work. Staff encourage children to participate in their meetings. This means that children can directly influence the care that they receive. Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 4 Leaders and managers’ approach to care planning is of variable quality. While the manager ensures that children are welcomed into the home by encouraging children to visit the home before moving in, she has not ensured that all children have a positive experience when leaving the home. On one occasion, the manager dropped a child’s clothes off at the child’s school when they were due to move on from the home. This is not a child-centred approach. In addition, the manager arranged for one child with a moderate learning disability to move into the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

However, she did not fully explore the child’s disability when making this plan. Furthermore, this is not within the range of needs that the home caters for, as stipulated in its statement of purpose. The manager had to serve notice on the child, as the staff were unable to keep them safe in the community.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The home is clean and tidy. The lounge and dining areas are warm and welcoming. There are photos around the home of children, and staff encourage children to personalise their bedrooms. However, some areas of the home are looking tired and worn. For example, the laminate on the kitchen doors is starting to lift, there was some damage to one wall upstairs and there was mould on the bathroom shower seal. This detracts from the homely feeling.

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

Overall, safeguarding is effective. The child living in the home said he feels ‘safe’. Children’s written plans are comprehensive. The manager ensures that children’s care plans, risk assessments and 24-hour management plans are regularly updated. This ensures that staff have up-to-date guidance on how to mitigate risk and keep children safe. The number of incidents in the home is low.

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

The manager and staff act quickly when children are being unkind to each other. There has recently been a period of unsettlement in the home, when two children did not get along and struggled to live together. The manager and staff intervened by completing mediation and work with the children around bullying and relationships. However, this was ineffective and consequently one of the children had to move out of the home. In addition, when children have experienced bullying at school, the manager collaborates with school to identify strategies to support children to access education safely.

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

The manager responds well to allegations and complaints. The manager ensures that information is shared swiftly with appropriate professionals to avoid delay and ensure that children are protected from harm. This helps children to be confident to raise any concerns as they know staff will take them seriously. The manager also ensures that there is learning from complaints and uses this to improve the quality of care for children. For example, she has reviewed the children’s grumbles procedure in response to a concern raised by one child.

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

The number of missing-from-home incidents is low. When children are missing, staff take appropriate action to ensure that children are quickly located. They follow robust missing-from-care plans by searching for children and consulting with Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 5 police. The manager ensures that children have the opportunity to be spoken to following any incidents, so they can raise any worries or concerns they may have.

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

Incidents requiring staff to intervene physically are infrequent. Physical intervention is used as a last resort to keep children and others safe. The manager has good oversight of incidents. She ensures that children and staff can reflect on incidents. This helps children and staff to learn from incidents and helps to keep children safe.

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

The manager and staff use consequences and rewards to encourage positive behaviour from children. While staff rarely use consequences, when used they are not restorative and at times excessive. For example, on one occasion, staff implemented a consequence of a child having to hand their phone in for four consecutive Saturday nights for failing to adhere to the agreement about their phone use. The manager has not reviewed this effectively. She has failed to consider whether the consequence is proportionate and effective. However, the manager has reduced consequences when children have engaged in direct work about keeping themselves safe.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The home’s manager is dedicated and leads by example. She wants the best for children. Staff share this ambition and work hard to improve the lives of the children they care for. The manager has aspirations for the home and has a good understanding of the areas for development, both for the staff and for what she wants to achieve in the home .

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager has effective monitoring systems in place to review the quality of care children receive, which enable her to quickly identify and rectify any shortfalls in practice. She makes effective use of the independent visitor reports and development plans to support the continual development of the home. However, the independent visitor continues to have a lack of consultation with professionals. This will impact on their ability to review the care afforded to children effectively. This was raised in the last inspection and has been restated.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Staff say they feel supported by the manager. She ensures that staff receive regular supervision and annual appraisal when required. Team meetings are also reflective and support staff to work as a team and promote consistency.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Training for staff is good. The manager ensures that staff have completed mandatory training and additional child-specific training, in topics such as diabetes, online safety, autism and anti-bullying. This ensures that staff have the knowledge to meet children’s specific needs.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

There has been a turnover of staff, which has led to a period in the home where there has been a lack of experienced staff and an increase in agency use. The manager has recognised this and has strived to reduce the impact of this by upskilling staff and offering agency staff training. However, the increased use of Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 6 agency staff has at times impacted on the continuity of care children have received. There is an ongoing recruitment drive, and two new senior staff are due to commence employment soon.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Managers have not ensured that all written records are accurate and a true reflection of daily occurrences and events in the home. For example, staff do not always record all the adults and visitors to the home in the daily running log. While this has not had an impact on children, it does have the potential to do so. Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 7

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Statutory requirements

This section sets out the actions that the registered person 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 must comply within the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

The care planning standard is that children—

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Requirement Due date

have a positive experience of arriving at or moving on from the home.

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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 children are admitted to the home only if their needs are within the range of needs of children for whom it is intended that the home is to provide care and accommodation, as set out in the home’s statement of purpose. (Regulation 14 (1)(b) (2)(a))

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, the registered person must ensure that staff support children to move on from the home in a sensitive and child-centred manner. In addition, the registered person should fully consider all children’s needs before admission, including any learning disability, to ensure that the home only admits children it is intended to provide care and accommodation for as stated in its statement of purpose. 29 December

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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

ensure that staff have the experience, qualifications and skills to meet the needs of each child; and

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Requirement Due date

ensure that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care to each child. 29 December Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 8 (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b) (2)(c)(e))

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Requirement Due date

This specifically relates to the registered person ensuring that staff have the experience to meet children’s needs and that the use of agency staff does not impact on the continuity of care children receive.

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that the home is a nurturing environment that meets the needs of the children. In particular, ensure that the home is suitably furnished and external areas are maintained to a good standard. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 15, paragraph 3.9)  The registered person should ensure that any consequences used to address poor behaviour are restorative in nature, to help children recognise the impact of their behaviour on themselves, other children, the staff caring for them and the wider community. In some cases, it will be important for children to make reparation in some form to anyone hurt by their behaviour and the staff in the home should be skilled to support the child to understand this and carry it out. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 46, paragraph 9.38)  The registered person should ensure that the independent visitor seeks feedback

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Recommendations

from professionals to make a rigorous assessment of the home’s arrangements for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the home’s care. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 65, paragraph 15.5).  The registered person should ensure that staff are familiar with the home’s policies on record-keeping and understand the importance of accurate and clear recording. This is specifically in relation to the home’s running log. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4)

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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: 2613327 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Serenity Specialist Care Ltd

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: First Floor, Dominion Court, 43 Station Road, Solihull, West Midlands B91 3RT

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Inspectors

Sonia Sullivan, Social Care Inspector Laura Norcop, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: 2613327 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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