Clayfields House Secure Unit

Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 1 Clayfields House Secure Unit Nottinghamshire County Council Clayfields House Secure Unit, 18–20 Moorbridge Lane, Stapleford, Nottingham NG9 8GU

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Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this secure children’s home

This secure children’s home is managed by a local authority. It is approved by the Department for Education to restrict children’s liberty.

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Information about this secure children’s home

The home can accommodate up to 20 children aged between 10 and 17 years. It provides accommodation for up to 12 children placed by the Youth Custody Service and has up to eight places for children accommodated under section 25 of the Children Act 1989. Thirteen children were living at the home at the time of the inspection.

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Information about this secure children’s home

Admission of any child under section 25 of the Children Act 1989 who is under 13 years of age requires the approval of the Secretary of State.

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Information about this secure children’s home

The commissioning of health services in this home is the statutory responsibility of NHS England under the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

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Information about this secure children’s home

The manager has been registered with Ofsted since May 2018.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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good

Children’s education and learning good Children’s health good How well children and young people are helped and protected good

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good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers good Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 2 The secure children’s home provides effective services that meet the requirements for good.

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good

Date of last inspection: 23 January 2024

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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 secure children’s home: SC036740 3

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

23/01/2024 Full Good 24/10/2023 Full Inadequate 18/07/2023 Full Inadequate 19/07/2022 Full Good Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 4

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children benefit from positive relationships with staff who know them well. The staff have caring interactions with children. The children have formed good friendships with their peers. This helps to improve children’s individual social skills and the quality of their daily life experiences.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children’s opinions and views are considered in the decisions about their care and support. When required, managers and staff advocate for children to support them with plans about their future. Children told inspectors that they have adults who they can go to if they have any concerns or worries. This ensures that children are listened to.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The home is bright and welcoming. This is despite going through extensive building works. Children personalise their bedrooms, and this helps them to have a sense of belonging.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children are provided with information to support their vulnerabilities and risks. This aids their understanding and helps them to develop the skills to keep themselves safe and make informed decisions for the future. The interventions team carry out crucial sessions with all children based on what is important to each individual child. Children on remand are helped to prepare for court, and children who have been sentenced are supported to address their criminal behaviour.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Children benefit from a healthy and balanced diet. They are largely positive about the food provided. Children are regularly supported to cook meals of choice and told the inspectors that they enjoyed and welcomed being able to do so.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

Professionals and parents are positive about the quality of care and support provided to children. One senior practitioner stated, ‘[Child] is making significant progress.’ Feedback received confirms how well staff support children. One parent said, ‘The only reason I have been able to get through this past year is because I know my son is safe. I can sleep at night because of the good care they give to my son.’

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: good

The information about each child is current and details their individual needs. The staff regularly review children’s progress. The multi-disciplinary progress reports are impressive and highlight the positive improvements each child is making in all aspects of their lives. However, other records are of a varying quality, in particular the key- worker sessions undertaken with children. These are poorly planned and recorded. This makes it difficult to determine the effectiveness of these interactions with children.

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Children’s education and learning: good

The headteacher and deputy headteacher provide strong leadership. They have an accurate understanding of the key strengths and take prompt action to address any Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 5 weaknesses. They know the children well and have positive relationships with staff. Experienced governors provide effective oversight of the quality of the curriculum.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Leaders have remedied the main weakness identified at the previous inspection. They have improved the frequency and quality of written feedback to children. As a result, children are helped to make the necessary improvements to their work.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Leaders and managers offer a broad curriculum which meets children’s needs. Children have access to a core curriculum of English, mathematics and science. Leaders offer vocational options in barbering, catering, construction and mechanics. Some children have recently achieved GCSE qualifications in the core subjects, and others study vocational options in line with their career ambitions. One child has benefited from an internal work experience as a sport assistant.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Leaders and managers collect an appropriate range of information about children’s starting points. This is captured in children’s exercise books, folders and portfolios across the curriculum. Teachers assess children’s initial understanding in mathematics, English and reading. They use information from the education, health and care plans to identify children’s additional learning needs. Staff assess children’s behaviours and attitudes, and identify any areas for improvement.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Teachers develop children’s reading well. They use phonics to support those with weaker reading skills. Teachers introduce children to fiction and non-fiction texts and are in most cases successful in encouraging reading for pleasure.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Teachers use a variety of relevant, interesting and appropriately challenging resources and assessments. Children respond well to the activities that teachers plan. For example, in science teachers use models and demonstrations to explain the links between theory and practice. Children understand how friction affects a model car as it travels down a plank covered in bubble wrap. At times, teachers do not ensure that all children record their mathematical thinking in a clear and detailed way. As a result, some children cannot explain how they have solved problems.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Children develop strong practical and vocational skills. They have a good understanding of health and safety and how it relates to the different vocational areas. Children use the appropriate chopping boards, and clean a chicken, when making a healthy Greek dish for lunch. They clean and use clippers appropriately when demonstrating a fade in barbering.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Teachers use the support of the teaching assistants well. The roles of the teacher and teaching assistant are clear and focus on academic support. Children maintain their interest in learning within the classroom.

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Children’s education and learning: good

Staff work well together to manage the behaviour of the children. They take action to maintain an appropriate learning environment in the classroom. Children have positive relationships with staff and most children increase their resilience over time. Children’s attendance is very high. Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 6 Staff have produced a personal development curriculum which prepares children well for adulthood. Children understand the features of healthy relationships, and what consent means in this context. Children benefit from independent careers information, advice and guidance. Leaders prepare children well for their next steps.

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Children’s education and learning: good

In most subjects, teachers teach the course content well. They skilfully create opportunities for children to revisit topics so that children can remember what they have been taught. For example, in the English curriculum, the teacher slowly builds from short and simple informal letters to long and more complex formal letters. However, in a very few subjects, teachers plan their course content around the assessment requirements of qualifications. There are also occasions when teachers move quickly from one assessment to the next before the children have thoroughly understood the topic.

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Children’s health: good

Children’s health consistently improves from their starting points. Each child receives timely, comprehensive and holistic assessment using the comprehensive health assessment tool (CHAT). This enables the health team to determine children’s immediate and long-term health needs. In turn, this makes sure that the children access the right health pathway.

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Children’s health: good

All children are quickly registered with a local general practitioner who visits the home weekly. In addition, children have timely access to immunisations, sexual-health screening, optician and dental care. There is good evidence of targeted child-centred work that leads to each child’s known health needs being met.

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Children’s health: good

Children benefit from access to a skilled and experienced team of trained healthcare staff. The healthcare staff work creatively to build positive relationships with children. They know the children well and focus their practice on listening to children. This improves children’s health outcomes, including their work with Leaders Unlocked. This approach helps children to feel comfortable when discussing their health needs.

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Children’s health: good

Children respond well to an environment where children feel safe to talk about their physical, emotional and mental health. This is achieved by all the Clayfield House staff routinely meeting and responding to children’s health needs in the most effective way because the home has fully embedded the integrated framework ‘secure stairs’.

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Children’s health: good

The monitoring of the healthcare service by leaders and managers is effective and ensures that any identified shortfalls in the care for children are quickly addressed. This includes regular supervision of the team and the effective and safe dispensing, storing and recording of medication.

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Children’s health: good

The health team contributes to the transition planning process for children. However, the planning for transition does not start early enough. Leaders identified a need for earlier transition planning and have introduced a new role to assist with transition. The impact Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 7 of this role is yet to be seen. This assists with continuity of care when children are discharged into the community or other secure placements.

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

Children benefit from clear and individual risk assessments. These provide staff with clear strategies to follow to reduce the identified vulnerabilities and risks of harm. Control measures are put in place without delay when new risks are identified. These actions help to keep children consistently safe.

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

Staff know children well and help children to manage their emotions. Staff use distraction and de-escalation approaches to reduce crisis for children. The use of single separation incidents (when children are locked into an area alone) meets the legal criteria. These are low in occurrence, and for a minimal amount of time. When children are calm, they return to be with their peers promptly.

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

When children are at risk of hurting themselves or others, staff intervene with physical holds. Physical holds are used safely, proportionately, and for a short length of time. Health staff always check children following these incidents to make sure they are suitably supported. In addition, staff spend time with the children afterwards, which reassures children that the staff care about them.

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

When children do not get on with each other appropriate action is taken to prevent potential bullying. Staff work with children to repair relationships whenever possible. This work keeps children safer on a day-to-day basis.

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

Any allegations made by children are taken seriously. Leaders work in consultation with the local authority designated officer (LADO) and children’s social workers. The one allegation made has been suitably investigated and acted on. Nevertheless, some documentation requested by the LADO was not sent in a timely manner and there were gaps in records. These shortfalls detract from the positive work undertaken to safeguard children.

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

The records that detail matters relating to the safety of children and the management of behaviour have several gaps. The records of physical intervention, single separation logs and security search logs do not include the required details. Although these gaps do not have any direct impact on the children, they do not provide accurate records of each child’s lived experiences or the actions taken to keep them safe in each instance.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The registered manager and the senior leadership team have ambition to provide consistently good care to children. They strive to continue to provide even better care, education and health outcomes to children in line with the home’s statement of purpose.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Children benefit from positive daily childhood experiences from the care they receive. This is evident in the implementation of a number of changes and new initiatives. These Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 8 include changes to the ethos and approach to support children when managing their presenting behaviour, school holiday enrichment, and plans to improve the health and education teams.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

There is a growing focus on staff welfare. This includes the routine delivery of staff formal supervision sessions, when personal well-being is discussed. In addition, there are opportunities for staff to access the health team for support.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Children are cared for by staff who have most of the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to meet their care needs. Staff receive a good, detailed induction and other mandatory and more specialist training. However, not all staff are recorded as receiving training in autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that would further improve their knowledge and skills to meet the needs of children with these particular needs.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The delivery of more consistent care to children is accomplished by the structured communication system in place. There are wide-ranging multi-disciplinary meetings across the service. These meetings assist in keeping all designations of staff up to date about the care of the children, and any changes being made to their care.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

There is internal and external monitoring of the service. Complaints have been swiftly investigated and addressed. The recommendations made at the last inspection have been implemented. Some areas are suitably monitored. Nevertheless, a number of recording omissions have been identified during this inspection, which have not been detected in the monitoring undertaken by leaders and managers. This is a missed opportunity to showcase the good work undertaken with children and to ensure that detailed and accurate records are kept. Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 9

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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 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

use monitoring and review systems to make continuous improvements in the quality of care provided in the home. (Regulation 13 (1)(h)) 13 November 2024

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Recommendations

 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. Information about the child must always be recorded in a way that will be helpful to children. In particular, key-work records should be accurately completed and fully evidence the detail of the direct work, including the child’s view. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4)  The registered person should ensure that children’s progress in education can be measured and evidenced in various ways, including, but not limited to, success in academic, vocational and other awards and qualifications. Measurements of progress should include qualitative information. In particular, improve the quality of education by ensuring that curriculums extend beyond the specifications for qualifications, and

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Recommendations

children present their mathematical reasoning. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 26, paragraph 5.2)  The registered person should ensure that staff can access appropriate facilities and resources to support their training needs, and should understand the key role they play in the training and development of staff in the home. In particular, ensure that staff received training in autism awareness and ADHD. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 53, paragraph 10.11) Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 10

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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 secure children’s home: SC036740 11

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Secure children’s home details

Registered provider address: Nottinghamshire County Council, County Hall, Loughborough Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 7QP

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Secure children’s home details

Responsible individual: Jennifer Whiston

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Inspectors

Debbie Foster, Social Care Inspector Gemma McDonnell, Social Care Inspector Gary Turney, Social Care Inspector Martin Ward, His Majesty’s Inspector, Further Education and Skills Carolyn Brownsea, His Majesty’s Inspector, Further Education and Skills (development) Sarah Smith, Health Inspector, Care Quality Commission Inspection report for secure children’s home: SC036740 12 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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