Children's Home run by Direct Care Children’s Homes Ltd in Wiltshire

Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 1 Registered provider: Direct Care Childrens Homes Ltd

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Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This home is owned by a private organisation. It provides care for three children who may have needs associated with social and emotional difficulties. At the time of this inspection, three children were living in the home.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager has been registered with Ofsted since May 2023.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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inadequate

How well children and young people are helped and protected inadequate

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inadequate

The effectiveness of leaders and managers inadequate

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inadequate

There are serious and/or widespread failures that mean the care and experiences of children and young people are poor and they are not making progress.

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inadequate

Date of last inspection: 30 October 2023

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inadequate

Overall judgement at last inspection: good

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

30/10/2023 Full Good 14/06/2022 Full Requires improvement to be good Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 3

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inadequate

Three children are currently living in this home. Since the last inspection, four children have moved out of the home and three have moved in.

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inadequate

Too often, children’s progress and their opportunities and experiences in this home are not good enough. One child’s bedroom is in a wholly inadequate state, with limited furniture, no window covering and an overpowering smell due to urine being left on the floor. There is damage throughout the home to carpets, a sofa and wallpaper. The carpet is not properly fitted to the stairs, creating a trip hazard. A window has been sealed in the living room due to previous risk-taking behaviour by a child no longer living in the home, which had not been reviewed after their departure. Action was taken during the inspection to ensure the environment was suitable for children to continue living in.

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inadequate

Staff are not engaging children in routines effectively. Some children are spending long periods of time in their bedrooms and are regularly eating meals alone in their rooms. This indicates a lack of care and nurture. Staff are not helped to find creative ways to engage children in positive routines in the home. It is, at times, accepted that children will spend lengthy periods of time alone, when this is not necessarily the right choice for supporting their welfare. Some children engage with trips out of the home to play basketball, spend time with family and to collect art supplies for an art project. Some children are also encouraged to attend activities that interest them, such as music and dance classes, although children’s attendance at these activities is variable.

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inadequate

Barriers to children making progress are too often accepted by staff, which means that children’s progress in the home has stalled. Staff are often unable to use their relationships with children effectively to engage them in positive activities. Insufficient staff in the home has meant that some children are not receiving the nurturing care that they need, because the majority of staff’s time is spent with one child. Professionals working with staff also recognise that children are, at times, not making progress in the home.

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inadequate

Care plans do not always give enough information about the risks or the ways in which staff should engage children with healthy eating, for example. This means that children’s risks are sometimes not well understood, and some health needs that may require careful monitoring are missed. There is, at times, a lack of knowledge among staff in respect of children’s risks, and behaviour support plans are not always reflective of how staff are working. Staff recognise that insufficient staff or the regular use of agency staff is impacting on opportunities for some of the children and the relationships that children are able to develop. Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 4 When children have disagreements and fall out with each other, or when they report bullying behaviours from other children, staff lack the skill to repair these relationships.

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

When children go missing from home, staff search the local area and will try to contact the child’s family. However, staff do not always use a nurturing approach in order to de-escalate a situation or try to persuade children to return home. This has resulted in the police being called to manage situations that staff are unable to manage. Furthermore, when children return home from being missing, responses from staff are, at times, overly driven by gathering information. While this is important, this means that there is not enough of a focus on repairing relationships.

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

Children do not always receive care that is in line with the statement of purpose. The behavioural approaches that are sometimes used in practice are sometimes at odds with the trauma-informed approach that the home espouses. Consequences are used in this home; however, it is not clear that the manager reviews or understands their effectiveness. At times, the use of consequences means that children may experience a lack of compassion, warmth and understanding. There is little appropriate reflection on how staff’s behaviour before and during incidents that led to the use of consequences, either helped to defuse, contributed to or created the situation.

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

When children have made complaints about other children in the home, leaders and managers have been unable to implement strategies to ensure that this child felt safe. This resulted in a child being moved to another home against their wishes in an unplanned way.

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

Staff in the home do not pick up on patterns of behaviour, missing opportunities to implement strategies to avoid situations escalating. This means that restraints have taken place at predictable times of the day.

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

Medication is stored appropriately, and when children have refused to take prescribed medicines, there is always a clear record of this. When medication errors have taken place, there is management oversight and a record of reflection in staff supervision sessions.

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

Safer recruitment is undertaken appropriately, and checks are completed in a timely way. However, the recording systems used mean that the registered manager does not have effective oversight of this process and can lack knowledge about new staff.

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

Team meetings and staff supervisions are undertaken regularly. Staff are not always encouraged to reflect on their practice and how they engage children in the home, meaning that opportunities to try alternative strategies are missed. Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 5

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers have failed to provide children with good consistency of care and ensured that their welfare is promoted.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Children often use language that is institutional, such as referring to pocket money budgets, hair budgets and snack budgets. Institutional language is also present in care plans and behaviour support plans and through discussions with staff. Leaders and managers have not sought to address the culture of institutional language within the home, despite this being a recommendation from the previous inspection.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Vulnerabilities relating to not always having enough staff in the home and too many staff changes have impacted negatively on the care that staff are able to provide to children. This has contributed to children’s inability to form meaningful and positive relationships with those adults who care for and support them and has impacted on the opportunities available to some children. Agency staff are regularly used with children who have complex needs, which has on at least one occasion contributed to a situation escalating and the police being called.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Despite having concerns prior to this inspection about the effective management of the home, senior management oversight from the wider organisation is lacking. Senior managers have not been in the home enough to be assured of staff practice.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers recognise that there is a high turnover of children in the home and have reflected on issues with staffing and their admissions process. However, there has been limited reflection on how staff failing to meet the children’s basic needs for love and nurturing care has impacted on children’s progress and behaviour in the home.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

When children move into the home, this is not considered or planned carefully enough, meaning that children do not have the opportunity to settle into the home before other children are moved in. Despite leaders and managers becoming aware that one child’s behaviours were escalating and worrying about staff’s ability to meet this child’s needs, the decision was made to move another child into the home. This has had a negative impact on staff’s ability to meet children’s needs.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

When staff have become unable to manage children’s behaviours, this has resulted in children having to move on from the home in an unplanned way. Leaders and managers have not sought to upskill staff to enable them to manage difficult situations and to prevent this from happening. Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 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 quality and purpose of care standard is that children receive care from staff who—

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Requirement Due date

understand the children’s home’s overall aims and the outcomes it seeks to achieve for children;

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Requirement Due date

use this understanding to deliver care that meets children’s needs and supports them to fulfil their potential.

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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

understand and apply the home’s statement of purpose;

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Requirement Due date

understand and apply the home’s statement of purpose;

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Requirement Due date

protect and promote each child’s welfare;

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Requirement Due date

provide personalised care that meets each child’s needs, as recorded in the child’s relevant plans, taking account of the child’s background;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to develop resilience and skills that prepare the child to return home, to live in a new placement or to live independently as an adult;

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Requirement Due date

ensure that the premises used for the purposes of the home are designed and furnished so as to—

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Requirement Due date

meet the needs of each child. (Regulation 6 (1)(a)(b) (2)(a)(b)(i)(ii)(iv)(vi)(c)(i))

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Requirement Due date

The registered person should ensure that the home environment is well maintained, clean and homely throughout. The registered manager should also ensure that staff consistently provide 14 August 2024 Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 7 positive routines and structure to children, and that the therapeutic approach adopted by the home is understood by all staff and applied in practice. Additionally, leaders and managers should ensure that staff have the skills to provide responsive, nurturing care to children that is applied in practice.

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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

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

are provided with supervision and support to enable them to understand and manage their own feelings and responses to the behaviour and emotions of children, and to help children to do the same;

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Requirement Due date

de-escalate confrontations with or between children, or potentially violent behaviour by children. (Regulation 11 (1)(a)(b)(c) (2)(a)(ix)(x)(xi))

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Requirement Due date

The registered manager should ensure that staff have the necessary knowledge to work effectively with children who may have experienced trauma, and that effective relationships are developed between children and staff to enable staff to de- escalate situations. Additionally, the registered manager should ensure that staff supervision is reflective and considers how staff work with children, how they meet their individual needs and how this aspect of practice can be improved. 14 August 2024

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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— 14 August 2024 Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 8 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. (Regulation 13 (1)(a)(b) (2)(a)(c)(d)(e)(f))

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Requirement Due date

*These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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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 children’s home: 2655041 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Direct Care Childrens Homes Ltd

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Unit 4, Paxton Business Centre, Whittle Road, Salisbury SP2 7YR

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Inspectors

Min Sims, Social Care Inspector Clare Nixson, Social Care Inspector Inspection report children’s home: 2655041 10 regulates 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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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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