Children's home run by Stockton on Tees Borough Council in Stockton-on-Tees

Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 1 SC456710 Registered provider: Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council

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Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children’s home

The home is operated and managed by a local authority. It provides care for up to four children who may experience social and emotional difficulties.

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Information about this children’s home

The registered manager is not currently in post. An acting manager is overseeing the running of the home.

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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 widespread failures that mean children and young people are not protected or their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded, and the care and experiences of children and young people are poor, and they are not making progress.

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inadequate

Overall judgement at last inspection: requires improvement to be good

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

01/10/2024 Full Requires improvement to be good 03/07/2023 Full Good 16/08/2022 Full Outstanding 29/06/2021 Full Good Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 3

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Significant shortfalls in the safeguarding and protection of children and, the leadership and management of this home mean that children have not been safeguarded effectively and their welfare is not promoted. This has impacted on children’s progress and their experience of living in the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

When a child moves into the home, the manager does not consider the child’s individual needs and vulnerabilities or how staff will meet these needs. The manager does not fully consider the impact that a child moving into the home may have on those who are already living there. This poor care planning has resulted in a significant increase in risks for one child.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Staff are not proactive in supporting children with their emotional needs. When children have self-harmed, staff have not followed this up with the child to explore their emotions and offer further support. This prevents children from receiving the help and reassurance that they need.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Key-work sessions are not effective in helping children to learn about their needs and risks. Furthermore, important discussions with children do not always take place. When staff have had conversations with children about going missing or misusing substances, they have been blaming in nature and have not recognised the impact of other influences. There is no evidence of children learning as a result of these conversations. This means that children are not helped to develop strategies to understand and manage their behaviours.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Staff encourage children to engage with their schools or tutors, but this isn’t always effective. When children struggle, this affects their daily routine, and staff are not always proactive in responding to this. This leaves children spending long periods in their bedrooms, and they are not always offered an alternative learning experience to engage in. This has impacted on children making progress with their education.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

Staff build positive relationships with family members. Feedback from children’s families is complimentary. Family members say that staff regularly communicate with them about their children and support them to have positive relationships. However, when one parent sought support for their child when they attended their home, staff did not respond to help to de-escalate the situation. This led to unnecessary police involvement.

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Overall experiences and progress of children and young people: inadequate

When children move out of the home, staff support them to have positive endings. Staff support children to move out in a planned way. One professional said, ‘Staff made sure she was comfortable, and they supported her with the changes.’ Where needed, staff provide ongoing support to children after they move out in order to reduce the impact that such moves can have. Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 4

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

One child is at risk of exploitation. Effective steps have not been taken to keep them safe. Staff have not explored or acted on concerns to effectively safeguard the child. There has been an increased risk of criminal exploitation, leading to the child being arrested and suspended from their education provision. This does not show children that staff will act to keep them safe.

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

Information held in children’s risk assessments is not clear. Risk assessments are not kept up to date. They do not provide clear actions for staff to follow and lack guidance on how to de-escalate unwanted behaviours that challenge staff. This means that children do not receive a consistent or effective response from staff to reduce risks of harm.

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

Relationships between children are not well managed in order to reduce risks. Concerns around the relationship between two children have not been effectively managed by staff, and there has been an increase in unsafe behaviours that include missing from home, misusing substances, and self-injurious behaviours. Staff have failed to follow actions set out in children’s care plans to disrupt negative relationships. For one child, risks have significantly increased, leaving them at increased risk of harm.

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

Records of incidents that happen in the home are not always clear or recorded. There is different information recorded across different documents. This prevents management oversight, making it difficult to identify what actions staff took, and when, to reduce risks for children.

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

When children go missing from home, the response is not consistent. Staff do not always follow up searches for children when they are missing overnight. Staff do contact known people to try and locate children. However, recording of incidents is inconsistent and, on some occasions, unclear. Management oversight of missing episodes is poor and does not identify follow-up actions to reduce further episodes of missing and children are not always spoken to.

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

Safer recruitment practices are followed, and staff are suitably vetted before they come to work at the home. This helps make sure that the adults are safe working with the children. Staff then complete an induction to help them understand the children and their needs.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

The current registered manager is not in post and has not contacted Ofsted to cancel their registration. The current manager has been in post for 11 months. There have been significant delays in the manager applying to Ofsted to be registered. This means the home has been without permanent management arrangements over this time. This does not offer stability to the team. Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 5 The experiences, progress and protection of children are significantly poor. Leaders and managers have been ineffective in prioritising, challenging and making improvements within the staff team to address practice concerns. This has resulted in children having their needs unmet.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers’ oversight of the home is ineffective. The significant shortfalls identified over the course of this inspection have not been identified through their own monitoring systems or through feedback from the independent visitor and the external monitoring process. Managerial audits fail to identify actions and address shortfalls in the home. Furthermore, the manager is undertaking additional responsibilities due to staff shortages, which has a further impact on his ability to have oversight. This prevents the manager from identifying poor practice and has led to poor outcomes for children.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff are not always provided with adequate support and there are significant gaps in some staff’s practice-related supervision sessions. When supervision takes place, this is not always reflective. Supervisions are brief and actions are not always followed up or set from one supervision to the next. This prevents staff from having the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers develop positive relationships with multi-agency professionals. Feedback from professionals has identified that the staff communicate regularly with them to keep them up to date. This helps important people know what is happening in children’s lives. Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 6

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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 protection of children standard is that children are protected from harm and enabled to keep themselves safe.

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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

assess whether each child is at risk of harm, taking into account information in the child’s relevant plans, and, if necessary, make arrangements to reduce the risk of any harm to the child;

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Requirement Due date

manage relationships between children to prevent them from harming each other;

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Requirement Due date

take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare. (Regulation 12 (1) (2)(a)(i)(iv)(vi)) 17 October 2025

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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; 17 October 2025 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 7 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

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. (Regulation 14 (1)(a)) 14 November 2025

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Requirement Due date

The education standard is that children make measurable progress towards achieving their educational potential and are helped to do so.

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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 the barriers to learning that each child may face and take appropriate action to help the child to overcome any such barriers;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to understand the importance and value of education, learning, training and employment;

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Requirement Due date

promote opportunities for each child to learn informally;

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Requirement Due date

help each child who is above compulsory school age to participate in further education, training or employment and to prepare for future care, education or employment;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to attend education or training in accordance with the expectations in the child’s relevant plans. (Regulation 8 (1) (2)(a)(iii)(iv)(v)(ix)(x)) 5 November 2025

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must maintain records ("case records") for each child which— 05 November 2025 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 8 include the information and documents listed in Schedule 3 in relation to each child;

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Requirement Due date

are signed and dated by the author of each entry. (Regulation 36 (1)(a)(b)(c))

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Requirement Due date

* These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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Recommendation

 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. Staff should record information on individual children in a non-stigmatising way that distinguishes between fact, opinion and third-party information. Information about the child must always be recorded in a way that will be helpful to the child. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 62, paragraph 14.4)

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Information about this inspection

The inspector has 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: SC456710 9

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Municipal Buildings, Church Road, Stockton-on-Tees TS18 1TW

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Inspector

Natalie Clark, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: SC456710 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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Inspector

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Inspector

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Inspector

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