Children's home run by Hexagon Care Services Limited

Inspection report for children’s home: 1241776 1 Registered provider: Hexagon Care Services Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

This home is privately owned. It provides care for up to four children who have had adverse childhood experiences that have led to associated trauma and presenting complex behaviours.

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Information about this children’s home

The manager registered with Ofsted in January 2024.

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Information about this children’s home

At the time of this inspection, two children were living at the home.

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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: 21 November 2023

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: requires improvement to be good

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

Inspection report for children’s home: 1241776 2 21/11/2023 Full Requires improvement to be good 16/08/2022 Full Good 15/02/2022 Full Good 18/02/2020 Full Good Inspection report for children’s home: 1241776 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The manager and staff are supported by a skilled clinical team. As a result, they are caring, patient, nurturing, empathetic, playful and curious. They know the children quite well and understand their lived trauma and the impact this can have on their daily lives. They provide children with therapeutic care that meets their holistic needs.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The manager and staff work well with social workers and have provided children with good transitions into and out of the home. One child is receiving outreach support. This means that staff are still supporting her, which is helping her to settle quickly in her new home. Another child, who has moved out of the home, requested staff’s support to collect her GCSE results as they know her well and would support her emotionally if she required this.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The manager and staff work well with teachers to support children when they face barriers to learning. They attend school if requested to do so and will stay with children and offer them reassurance to enable them to continue with their school day. This supports children’s learning.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Staff told the inspector that it is of paramount importance to capture and listen to children’s wishes and feelings as this makes them feel valued. They do this through spending quality time with children, carrying out key-work sessions with them and supporting them to attend their care planning meetings. Children are involved in making decisions about their lives and what is important to them.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The manager and staff support children to spend quality time with close family members and friends even when they live far away from the home. This shows the children that staff genuinely care about them and has supported in building positive relationships with children.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The children have been on holiday over the summer and have enjoyed day trips and doing activities they love. They have also enjoyed simple pleasures of doing activities with staff at home, such as cooking, going for walks and watching movies.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The home environment is warm and welcoming and provides children with ample space to relax and unwind. All children have been given opportunities to make their bedrooms their own and their personalities shine through.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Although staff encourage and prompt children to start their day early and engage with activities offered, the routines still need to improve. At times, multi-agency care planning decisions have not supported the children in engaging consistently with routines offered by staff. Inspection report for children’s home: 1241776 4

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

The manager and staff work well with other professionals, such as social workers and the police, to keep children safe. When children go missing from home, staff follow children’s missing-from-care protocols and contact relevant agencies. They use their professional curiosity to find out where children have been and ask them if they have suffered any harm. They offer them reassurance and support.

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

There was an unsettled time at the home where the children were being unkind to each other. Staff and the managers supported all children well and worked collaboratively with all the children’s social workers to enable the children to respect each other and live together amicably. Some staff and the clinical team told the inspector that the challenges were that some of the staff were not consistently following agreed behaviour management plans.

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

The manager and staff manage complaints well. There is a clear audit trail of how these have been dealt with. There is clear feedback given to ensure that children and families are aware of the action that has been taken and the outcome of the complaint. Children feel listened to and know that if they raise issues in the future, managers and staff will take these seriously and act on them.

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

The manager and staff have not actioned all the recommendations from the annual fire risk assessment carried out by the fire service. There has not been any detrimental impact on any children or staff. However, it is still important to put in place recommended preventative measures to prevent risks associated with fire.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager is experienced and skilled and uses effective monitoring tools to have a good oversight of the home. She is equally supported by a skilled leader. She provides a supportive and a good learning environment for staff, which enables them to deliver good-quality care to children.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Partner agencies speak highly of the manager as she works well with them and keeps them up to date about the welfare and safety of the children. Staff say that they feel supported by the manager. They receive regular supervision, which supports them in providing children with good care.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Managers and the clinical team utilise staff meetings to upskill staff through facilitating specialist training that supports them to meet children’s individual needs. These learning opportunities are used for staff to reflect on their practice and look at what work they did well with the child and areas where they could have worked differently.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The manager uses various resources available to her to continuously develop her own practice and model positive parenting to staff and the children. Inspection report for children’s home: 1241776 5

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that staff seek to meet children’s basic needs in the way that a good parent would, recognising that many children in residential care have experienced environments where these needs have not been consistently met. This is an important aspect of demonstrating that the staff care about children and value them as individuals. In particular, the registered person should ensure that staff consistently support children to start their day early to enable them to engage in activities offered. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 15, paragraph 3.7)  The registered person should ensure that expectations of standards of behaviour are high for all staff and children in the home. These standards should be clear and unambiguous. Children should be supported to develop understanding and empathy towards each other. Positive behaviour and relationships should be reinforced, praised

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Recommendations

and encouraged. Poor behaviour should be challenged and discussed. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 39, paragraph 8.11)

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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: 1241776 6

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Hexagon Care Services Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Unit 1 Tustin Court, Riversway, Preston, Lancashire PR2 2YQ

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Inspector

Rumbi Mangoma, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: 1241776 7 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 children looked after, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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