Children's Home run by Cambian Childcare Limited in Norfolk

Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 1 SC456330 Registered provider: Cambian Childcare Limited

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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 privately run home offers care for up to 4 children who have social and emotional difficulties.

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Information about this children’s home

The previous registered manager left in January 2026.

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Information about this children’s home

There were 2 children living at the home at the time of this visit.

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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 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: good

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inadequate

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 2

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Inspection date Inspection type Inspection judgement

03/06/2025 Full Good 27/08/2024 Full Good 11/09/2023 Full Good 03/08/2022 Full Good Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 3

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Summary of findings

There have been significant management and staffing changes since the last full inspection in June 2025. Improvements to the service have not been made since a monitoring visit in January 2026. This leaves children receiving poor care from staff who do not have the skills and experience to meet their needs.

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Summary of findings

Children are not safer as a result of living at this home, and staff are not helping them to make good progress. There are several shortfalls that have led to an inadequate judgement in all areas. A number of requirements that were raised at the last full inspection, and restated at the January 2026 monitoring visit, have not been met. These have been restated again. Leaders and managers have failed to ensure that children’s safety and wellbeing are promoted and that they have positive experiences.

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inadequate

Since the last full inspection in June 2025, 3 children have moved out of the home and 2 children have moved in. At the time of this inspection, 2 children were living at the home. Children have moved out of the home in unplanned ways or when their needs can no longer be met by the staff at the home.

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inadequate

This has been a very unsettled home for the children over several months. Children said that they are unhappy living at the home and have not felt safe or supported by staff. There have been significant incidents when children have hurt one another or caused significant property damage to the home. One child has previously shared their views and concerns with their social worker and Ofsted. However, despite shortfalls being raised by Ofsted in the last inspection in January 2026, these are yet to be addressed by leaders and managers.

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inadequate

Staff are not helping children make good progress while living at this home. Children are not in education, training or employment. One child is offered some tutoring weekly. However, staff have failed to support the child to meaningfully engage with this. Children do not have good routines at the home that support their participation in educational opportunities or other informal learning activities with staff.

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inadequate

Staff have not provided children with clear boundaries or created healthy daily routines for children for several months. Children are regularly spending significant parts of the day on their own in their room, and staff have been reluctant to disturb them. Staff are not confident in challenging children in these routines, which has further reinforced the poor boundaries children already have at the home. Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 4 Staff are not consistently planning how they will spend time with children or thinking about creative ways they can engage children to spend positive time on activities in the community. This is reducing children’s access to positive and alternative experiences.

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inadequate

Staff do not always use positive language about children and sometimes use child- blaming language when writing in children’s records. These responses do not help children to understand their experiences if they wish to review their records. A child said some of their records do not represent incidents about them in a factual way. This does not help children to feel they are believed and understood.

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inadequate

The house is currently suitable for the children to live in. However, children and a parent raised concerns regarding how, on several occasions, it had taken a long time for significant property damage to the home to be repaired. Consequently, children said their home has not felt homely.

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inadequate

Social workers and parents shared their concerns that children have had poor experiences living in this home, that children have not made good progress and that their risks have increased. A parent said that they were not assured that their child was kept safe or that staff take suitable steps to care for them well. Children’s social workers advised that they are looking for suitable alternative homes for the children.

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

Children said they do not feel safe living at the home and do not think staff can meet their needs or care for them well.

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

Staff do not have positive relationships with children. Children said the numerous changes in staff have had a significant impact on their wellbeing. Children said they do not feel listened to or understood by staff.

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

Staff have not been confident to engage children in activities or offer suitable routines and boundaries throughout the day. Both children and senior leaders said an ‘office-based’ culture for staff has existed at the home. This has not helped staff develop meaningful relationships with children. Consequently, staff have not been confident or readily available to manage children’s behaviour. This has not helped children feel safe.

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

Staff are not confident to manage situations when children challenge staff. Staff frequently call the police to the home to manage behaviour incidents. This increases the risks for children to be criminalised and does not help them to learn from their behaviour. The overuse of police to manage incidents and behaviour was raised at the last full inspection in June 2025. Leaders and managers have not ensured that staff practice has improved since that time.

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

Staff have failed to provide adequate supervision to keep children at the home safe. They have not appropriately supervised children when they spend time together. This Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 5 has resulted in unsafe situations between children, and children have on a number of occasions physically assaulted each other. Staff have not been able to redirect negative behaviour, help children to learn from their behaviour or help them settle quickly when they are feeling distressed. On several occasions, children have accessed unsafe parts of the home, such as the roof.

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

Staff rarely support the children to understand their behaviour through consequences. When consequences are implemented, the records are poor. Children do not feel encouraged to make behaviour changes as they are not praised and supported by staff to behave in a positive way.

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

Children rarely need to be restrained by staff. However, records of incidents when staff have physically held children do not always provide clear and factual detail. For one incident, there is no evidence of a manager’s oversight to ensure that staff’s responses were fair and justified. There are no debriefs by a manager with staff. The child was not spoken with after the incident, in a suitable time frame, despite them making an allegation against staff in respect of this physical intervention. On other occasions, it is not clear if staff have needed to physically hold children during incidents. Poor record-keeping undermines leaders and managers’ ability to understand incidents of physical intervention and keep children safe.

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

On those occasions children have taken overdoses, staff seek medical advice through on-call emergency services. However, children have not felt well cared for by staff in these situations. On one occasion, staff delayed seeking urgent access to medical support due to transport difficulties. They did not seek help and support from on-call managers or other homes within the organisation to address the challenge. Children’s risk assessments, in respect of taking an overdose, are not clear about the difference between when children should be monitored at home and when an emergency response may be required. This does not help staff to understand how they should respond to keep children safe.

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

The lack of positive relationships between children and staff does not encourage children to want to spend time at the home. Children have regularly gone missing from home. When this happens, staff do look for the children and report them missing to the police in line with their care plans. However, staff curiosity about why and where children may be going is not demonstrated. Furthermore, records do not demonstrate whether leaders and managers routinely request that the child’s local authority offers independent return home interviews in order to better understand risk and how to keep children safe.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Since the last full inspection in June 2025, the previous registered manager and majority of staff have left the home. This has been very unsettling for children. There have been interim managers supporting the home but no consistent management oversight since the registered manager left in January 2026. A new manager has been appointed but is yet to start. A senior leader has temporarily been supporting Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 6 the home since the end of March 2026. While they are aware of many of the shortfalls identified at this inspection and have started to address some of the concerns raised by professionals, they have yet to implement effective improvements.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers have failed to monitor effectively the care experiences of children in the home, and there has been a significant period of decline in staff practice over the past 6 months. This has impacted on children’s care and overall experiences. The home was inspected in January 2026 following concerns raised by a child about the care they were receiving. Leaders and managers have yet to take steps to address these concerns or address the requirements that were stated at that or the previous inspection effectively.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

There has been significant change in the home, and staff have not felt well supported through these changes. The majority of previous staff have left the home, and therefore, most staff are new. The many changes in staff mean that children have not received continuity of care and have been unable to build relationships with the adults who care for them. This is compounded by staff inexperience. Most staff do not have experience of working with children in care before and are not confident in their skills to care for them. Some more experienced staff from a sister home have recently been employed to support new staff and children. However, this is a temporary measure and one that children said makes them feel uncomfortable in their home. They said this was because it no longer feels like their ‘home’ and it is a ‘workplace’.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers have not identified the gaps in staff practice and skills or taken appropriate action to address this. Staff have not received suitable training in areas, such as neurodiversity and the home’s specified model of care, to meet children’s specific identified needs. Staff are rarely spoken with after incidents, and there is not a culture of learning, development or reflection after serious incidents. This does not support staff to learn from incidents or consider what they could do differently to better support children.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff have not received regular supervision sessions. New staff have not been supported with more frequent supervision sessions to support their development and practice in line with the home’s statement of purpose. This potentially undermines staff’s ability to learn new skills and to develop their confidence. Many staff have not had appropriate probation reviews or annual appraisals. While the current senior leader supporting the home has started to prioritise support for staff, some staff have not had supervision for periods of up to 6 months despite times of high challenge.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Leaders and managers have not maintained appropriate oversight of incidents. Some incidents have been reviewed by managers up to 3 weeks after the incident. Poor recording and oversight of incidents means that leaders and managers do not have a suitable understanding of how some incidents have occurred at the home to assure themselves that staff practice is safe. Leaders and managers have failed to quickly notify Ofsted about incidents due to poor record-keeping and lack of management Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 7 oversight. This does not help Ofsted as the regulator to understand concerns as they happen at the home or to appropriately monitor the service.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Records management at the home is poor. Some information about children and incidents is missing or poorly documented. This has not helped leaders make sense of the shortfalls at this home and how these can be addressed quickly. Staff have not consistently communicated with children’s social workers or families about incidents, which potentially undermines parents and partner professionals’ ability to understand children’s changing needs. Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 8

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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 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

help each child to understand how to keep safe;

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Requirement Due date

have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of harm;

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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

understand the roles and responsibilities in relation to protecting children that are assigned to them by the registered person;

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Requirement Due date

take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child’s welfare; and

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Requirement Due date

that the home’s day-to-day care is arranged and delivered so as to keep each child safe and to protect each child effectively from harm. (Regulation 12 (1) (2)(a)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(v)(vi)(b))

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Requirement Due date

This requirement is restated. 21 June 2026

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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 21 June 2026 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 9 promotes their welfare.

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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’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

demonstrate that practice in the home is informed and improved by taking into account and acting on—

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Requirement Due date

feedback on the experiences of children, including complaints received;

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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)(e)(f)(g)(ii)(h))

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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

that staff— 31 July 2026 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 10 meet each child’s behavioural and emotional needs, as set out in the child’s relevant plans;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to develop socially aware behaviour;

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Requirement Due date

encourage each child to take responsibility for the child’s behaviour, in accordance with the child’s age and understanding;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to develop and practise skills to resolve conflicts positively and without harm to anyone;

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Requirement Due date

communicate to each child expectations about the child’s behaviour and ensure that the child understands those expectations in accordance with the child’s age and understanding;

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Requirement Due date

strive to gain each child’s respect and trust;

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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;

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Requirement Due date

that each child is encouraged to build and maintain positive relationships with others. (Regulation 11 (1)(a)(b)(c) (2)(a)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(v)(viii) (ix)(x)(xi)(b))

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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

details of the child’s behaviour leading to the use of the measure; 31 July 2026 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 11 the date, time and location of the use of the measure

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Requirement Due date

a description of the measure and its duration;

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Requirement Due date

details of any methods used or steps taken to avoid the need to use the measure;

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Requirement Due date

the effectiveness and any consequences of the use of the measure; and

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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; and

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Requirement Due date

within 5 days of the use of the measure, the registered person or the authorised person adds to the record confirmation that they have spoken to the child about the measure. (Regulation 35 (3)(a)(ii)(iii)(iv)(v)(vii)(b)(i)(ii)(c))

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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

help each child to achieve the child’s education and training targets, as recorded in the child’s relevant plans;

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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. (Regulation 8 (1) (2)(a)(i)(v)(ix)) 31 July 2026

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Requirement Due date

In meeting the quality standards, the registered person must, and must ensure that staff—

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Requirement Due date

seek to involve each child’s placing authority effectively in the child’s care, in accordance with the child’s relevant plans; 31 July 2026 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 12 seek to develop and maintain effective professional relationships with such persons, bodies or organisations as the registered person considers appropriate having regard to the range of needs of children for whom it is intended that the children’s home is to provide care and accommodation. (Regulation 5 (a)(d))

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Requirement Due date

The children’s views, wishes and feelings standard is that children receive care from staff who—

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Requirement Due date

develop positive relationships with them;

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Requirement Due date

take their views, wishes and feelings into account in relation to matters affecting the children’s care and welfare and their lives.

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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

ascertain and consider each child’s views, wishes and feelings, and balance these against what they judge to be in the child’s best interests when making decisions about the child’s care and welfare;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to express views, wishes and feelings;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to understand how the child’s views, wishes and feelings have been taken into account and give the child reasons for decisions in relation to the child;

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Requirement Due date

regularly consult children, and seek their feedback, about the quality of the home’s care. (Regulation 7 (1)(a)(b)(c) (2)(a)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)) 31 July 2026

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must ensure that all employees—

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Requirement Due date

receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience; and

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Requirement Due date

have their performance and fitness to perform their roles appraised at least once every year. (Regulation 33 (4)(b)(c)) 31 July 2026 Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 13 The registered person must notify HMCI and each other relevant person without delay if—

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Requirement Due date

there is any other incident relating to a child which the registered person considers to be serious. (Regulation 40 (4)(e)) 21 June 2026

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Requirement Due date

*These requirements are subject to a compliance notice.

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that children are offered a wide range of activities both inside and outside of the home and are encouraged to participate in those activities. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 31, paragraph 6.5)  The registered person should ensure that the home is consistently a nurturing, supportive and homely environment. (‘Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations, including the quality standards’, page 15, paragraph 3.9)

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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: SC456330 14

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Children’s home details

Registered provider: Cambian Childcare Limited

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Children’s home details

Registered provider address: Caretech, Parkview, 82 Oxford Road, Uxbridge UB8 1UX

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Inspector

Rebecca Hannell, Social Care Inspector Inspection report for children’s home: SC456330 15 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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