Children's Home run by Compass Children’s Homes Ltd in Surrey

Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 1 Registered provider: Compass Children’s Homes Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This home is operated by a private company and was registered in September 2020. The home provides care for up to four children with social and emotional difficulties.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager has been registered with Ofsted since June 2022.

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Information about this children’s home

There were no children living at the home at the time of this inspection.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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requires improvement to be good

How well children and young people are helped and protected good

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requires improvement to be good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

The children’s home is not yet delivering good help and care for children and young people. However, there are no serious or widespread failures that result in their welfare not being safeguarded or promoted.

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requires improvement to be good

Overall judgement at last inspection: good

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requires improvement to be good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

07/03/2023 Full Good 17/08/2021 Full Good 04/05/2021 Full Inadequate Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 3

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improvement to be good

A series of events in the three months before the inspection led to the three children in the home being moved suddenly to other accommodation. Staff illness, increasing use of agency staff and managing the behavioral dynamics of the children have together resulted in the temporary closure of the home.

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improvement to be good

Two of the children had lived at the home for over a year and staff had built good relationships with them. However, in the two to three months before the inspection, staffing difficulties resulted in the use of agency staff and staff from other homes. Attempts were made to always have a familiar member of staff on shift with the children. However, the children did not receive the consistency of staffing that they required to meet their needs. The changes in staff undermined relationships. One child told their social worker that they no longer had confidence in the staff to support them through difficult experiences such as meeting their family.

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improvement to be good

The moves for the children happened at very short notice. This meant that the children were not well prepared and the move caused unnecessary anxiety. The children stayed in temporary accommodation while longer-term arrangements were made. However, one child has already experienced a further move and a second child is also due to move again.

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improvement to be good

The individual staff were sensitive to the children’s needs and well-being and worked hard to minimise the children’s distress. They took them on ‘holiday’ for a week until they were able to move into their new respective homes. The children miss these staff. Although there are plans for the children and staff to meet up, this has not yet happened.

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improvement to be good

In the period before the recent turbulence, most children were settled and made some progress in their emotional well-being and engagement with education. The staff successfully supported one child to reunite with their family. Children’s social workers reflected that, until the latter months before the home closed, the children had been well supported. One said, ‘Staff try hard to make sure that children’s needs are met and they genuinely care.’

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improvement to be good

The staff actively sought the children’s views, wishes and feelings through conversations, meetings and questionnaires. One child said they had lots of fun when they lived at the home. They had particularly enjoyed going to watch trains, going bowling and staff making them their all-time favourite meal of tuna mayonnaise with pasta.

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improvement to be good

Staff were sensitive to children’s heritage and helped them to develop an awareness of, and respect for, their culture and religion. For one child in particular, this helped them to develop a positive sense of self and their heritage. Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 4

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

Staff built trusting relationships with the children. While it was not the case for all children, most children were settled and there were reductions in incidents such as going missing and self-harm. One social worker said that their child ‘felt cared for’ and was the most settled and ‘self-regulated’ that they had been.

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

The staff were imaginative in how they managed some difficult situations. In response to one child’s fascination for setting off the fire alarm, staff nominated them as an assistant fire marshall. With staff support, they completed the regular planned alarm tests, wearing a hi-vis vest. This gave them a sense of responsibility and successfully refocused their behaviour.

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

Staff managed safeguarding concerns appropriately with partner safeguarding professionals. Staff were quick to access counselling for one child following a traumatic experience. They also acted quickly to safeguard children in response to an allegation.

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

Due to the complex behavioural needs of some of the children who lived at the home, physical intervention has been used on many occasions. Staff received training in de-escalation and physical intervention. Thresholds for restraint were appropriately applied. However, records of restraint are not always sufficiently clear. On occasion, separate restraints which took place over several hours are recorded as one incident. Sometimes there is lack of clarity regarding who was involved each time the child was held and for how long any particular hold was applied. Each incident is reviewed to ensure that the use of physical intervention is proportionate and fair. However, the thoroughness of these reviews is sometimes undermined by the lack of clarity. On one occasion, the review of the restraint was carried out by a person less senior than the person who carried out the restraint. The lack of more senior oversight has the potential to undermine the integrity of the review.

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

The provider ensures that recruitment checks are carried out with sufficient rigour. Any concerns raised regarding ongoing staff suitability have been appropriately managed in partnership with local safeguarding professionals.

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good

The home has not consistently delivered the quality of care to the children that is set out in its statement of purpose. The home is not currently able to care for children. The registered manager has resigned. All staff have been redeployed to other homes in the organisation. The provider has temporarily closed the home. The decision to close the home was not well planned and communicated to children’s placing authorities. This negatively affected the ability for the children to have well- planned moves to new homes that are able to meet their needs. Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 5 The admission of a third child with complex needs created additional staffing demands which managers did not anticipate sufficiently. The home struggled to maintain the staffing needed to meet all the children’s complex needs. Staff and managers worked hard to try to maintain staffing levels. Senior leaders used agency

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good

staff and staff from other homes and they themselves worked shifts to supplement the small core staff team. However, it was not sustainable and failed to ensure consistent care for the children. The significant changes to who was caring for the children meant that staff did not always have the skills, knowledge and experience to support the children effectively. For some children, this undermined their confidence in staff.

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good

Some staff who previously worked at the home said appropriate training and supervision arrangements helped them to feel well supported. Others said that they were distressed and did not feel well supported through a very difficult time.

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good

Records held are not always clear and accurate. On occasion, dates are incorrectly recorded and physical intervention reports do not contain all the required information. Staff duty rosters do not always correlate with the daily records of who worked in the home.

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good

The three months before the inspection were very challenging for senior leaders. They recognised that the children were not receiving care of sufficient quality from consistent members of staff during this period. They decided to close the home to prevent staffing levels from becoming unsafe. The provider has approached Ofsted to request a condition which recognises the home as temporarily closed. Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 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 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

lead and manage the home in a way that is consistent with the approach and ethos, and delivers the outcomes, set out in the home’s statement of purpose;

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Requirement Due date

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

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Requirement Due date

ensure that the home has sufficient staff to provide care for each child;

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Requirement Due date

ensure that the home’s workforce provides continuity of care to each child;

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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;

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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)(a)(c)(d)(e)(f)(h)) 18 March 2024

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Requirement Due date

The care planning standard is that children—

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Requirement Due date

receive effectively planned care in or through the children’s home; and 18 March 2024 Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 7 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

plan for, and help, each child to prepare to leave the home or to move into adult care in a way that is consistent with arrangements agreed with the child’s placing authority. (Regulation 14 (1)(a)(b) (2)(iii))

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Requirement Due date

within 24 hours of the use of a measure of control, discipline or restraint in relation to a child in the home, a record is made which includes—

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Requirement Due date

a description of the measure and its duration;

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Requirement Due date

the name of the person who used the measure (“the user”), and of any other person present when the measure was used;

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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

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Requirement Due date

has signed the record to confirm it is accurate. (Regulation 35 (3)(a)(iv)(vi)(b)(i)(ii)) 18 March 2024

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that all incidents of control, discipline and restraint are subject to systems of regular scrutiny. To ensure that their use is fair and the above principles as set out in 9.35 are respected, the review of any restraint should be conducted by someone independent of the incident and senior to the person who carried out the restraint. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 46, paragraph 9.36)  The registered person should ensure that staff are familiar with the home’s policies on record-keeping and understand the importance of careful, objective and clear recording. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4) Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 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: 2578675 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Compass Children’s Homes Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: 3 Rayns Way, Syston, Leicester LE7 1PF

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Inspector

Joanna Heller, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: 2578675 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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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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