Children's Home run by Radiant Care Homes Limited in Wokingham

Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 1 Registered provider: Radiant Care Homes Limited Full inspection Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this children's home

This home was registered in February 2026. It is owned by a private organisation that has another home in the local area. Up to 3 children who experience social and emotional difficulties can live in the home.

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Information about this children's home

The manager is registered for this home and the other home in the local area.

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Information about this children's home

At the time of inspection, 2 children were living in the home.

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Overall experiences and progress of

children and young people, taking into account

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requires improvement to be good

How well children and young people are helped and protected requires improvement to be good

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requires improvement to be good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers inadequate

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requires improvement to be good

The children's home is not yet delivering good help and care for children and young people. However, there are no serious or widespread failures that result in their welfare not being safeguarded or promoted.

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requires improvement to be good

Date of last inspection: not previously inspected

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requires improvement to be good

Overall judgement at last inspection: not applicable

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requires improvement to be good

Enforcement action since last inspection: not applicable Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 2

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Summary of findings

Children are making progress, including a reduction in missing-from-home and self-injury incidents. This is linked to staff following the children's deprivation of liberty orders. Children say they feel safe, like the staff and feel listened to. Social workers also spoke positively about children's progress and the home's communication with them. Staff support children to maintain important relationships with family and previous foster carers.

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Summary of findings

There are significant weaknesses in care planning, risk assessment and management oversight. Children's plans lack individualisation, detailed guidance and evidence of children's wishes and feelings. Risk assessments are generic and do not sufficiently describe children's specific vulnerabilities or safeguarding needs. There are also inconsistencies in medication recording, the management of physical interventions and record-keeping.

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Summary of findings

Leaders and managers have insufficient oversight of practice, records and monitoring systems. Team meetings and supervision records lack consistency and detail. As a result, 5 statutory requirements have been set at this inspection.

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improvement to be good

Children's plans lack specific detail and do not contain the child's voice, wishes and feelings. They do not provide guidance on how best to look after the children to meet their needs and provide consistent and stable approaches to care. The language used is institutional and does not differentiate between the plans for different children. This shows a lack of thought and does not hold children at the centre of planning and care.

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improvement to be good

Children moving into the home do not benefit from clear and consistent planning. Pre- placement plans do not demonstrate individualised thought processes for each child and how children could live together, and they do not detail how staff have the specific skills to meet children's individual needs.

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improvement to be good

Children are making progress, such as this home being the place they have stayed the longest and a reduction in risks such as being missing from home or self-injury incidents. This is attributed to the staff's strict adherence to the children's deprivation of liberty orders and the safeguards and restrictions imposed by these.

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improvement to be good

Children say they like the staff and, despite their restrictions and the high staffing ratio, do not feel crowded or overly watched. Children feel that staff listen to them when they are frustrated or about what activities and meals they would like. However, children's Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 3 views on issues that impact them are not included in children's plans or the approach of how to care for them.

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improvement to be good

Social workers comment positively on the progress children have made and say that the manager keeps them informed of any concerns, recognising that one child has only been living in the home for a short period of time.

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improvement to be good

There is inconsistency and in the understanding of who has responsibility for providing the support for a child's emotional wellbeing. The social worker provided different details on who was providing a child's support, but the manager felt the local child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) would be providing this. However, there has been a proactive and swift response in seeking emotional wellbeing support from CAMHS when a child has been in crisis.

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improvement to be good

Medication administration records are not clear for homely remedies, meaning specifically that there is no simple check on the number of pain relief medications in the home. This is a risk given a child's history and self-injury. Additionally, controlled medication records are not clear on the amount available in the home.

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improvement to be good

Children are encouraged to continue seeing people who are important to them, such as parents and previous foster carers. This enables children to understand their history, culture and identity and maintain those positive links.

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improvement to be good

Staff know how to report safeguarding concerns and how to escalate these within the wider organisation and externally if necessary. They talk about children and how to protect them in line with their deprivation of liberty orders. However, children's plans and easily accessible information to staff do not contain the specific safeguarding risks that have led to children requiring these orders.

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improvement to be good

When children have been missing from home, the staff response has been swift. However, plans for missing-from-home incidents and liaison with the police for one child are not agreed with the local police force. This plan does contain all the detail of the risks for the child or information on previous exploitation risks.

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improvement to be good

There are inconsistencies and miscommunication about when physical interventions should be recorded as such. This lack of clarity means that there is no consistent agreement or understanding of what a physical intervention is or if a guide is used to how this should be recorded.

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improvement to be good

Risk assessments to guide staff on how to keep children safe are generic and lack specific individualised information. This means the staff cannot refer to detailed individual plans on how best to support children. This can lead to inconsistencies in approaches to safety and managing risk. Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 4 Children say they feel safe in the home. This is due to staff implementing the deprivation of liberty orders and the high staffing ratio. The front door is permanently locked, and there are strong restrictors on all windows, reducing the risk of missing-from-home incidents. There has been a robust response to issues of staff losing the front door key, which led to a significant risk as the front door could not be opened. This includes managers and directors making unannounced visits to the home and checking all staff have a key on their person.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

There is a consistent lack of oversight and consideration given to plans and risk assessments for children. The management team does not show that it is considering the need for individuality and reflecting the child's voice in any of the plans that are produced. They rely on staff already knowing the child, as there is no detail on the child's needs or history or demonstration of an individualised approach.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Not all staff are able to easily access plans for children on the home's computerised system. The manager shared that team meetings are used to share and solidify information and approaches to support children, but these are irregular, and minutes do not show any details or agreements in approach.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Throughout the inspection, the manager failed to produce records swiftly. It is unclear if this is due to records not existing or issues with the management's use and understanding of the computerised system. It was noted that there were gaps in children's daily records and records of handovers. Again, it is not clear if this is a recording issue or lack of monitoring by the manager.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Recent appointments of additional senior staff in the wider organisation, particularly the human resources manager, are leading to increased understanding and monitoring of training, recruitment practice and supervision. The quality of staff training is due to be bolstered with additional face-to-face sessions, while gaps are also being identified to ensure that all staff have the training they require to meet the needs of the children. Supervision is, in the main, regular, although the quality of recording differs greatly, meaning the specifics of what has been discussed or agreed are not always clear.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

External monitoring by the independent visitor has not been consistent. Visits were not completed in 2 consecutive months, and a new independent visitor has been identified. There is a lack of accuracy in the reports completed, which had not been checked or challenged prior to the report being sent to Ofsted. This led to confusion initially regarding the children who live in the home and their needs and current situation.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: inadequate

Staff say they feel supported and that they work well as a team. The team is new and still forming, but there appears to be a suitable level of joint working between them. Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 5

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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 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;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to understand how the child's privacy will be respected and the circumstances when it may have to be limited;

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Requirement Due date

help each child to prepare for any review of the child's relevant plans and to make the child's views, wishes and feelings known for the purposes of that review; and 28 August 2026 Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 6 make each child aware of and, if necessary, remind them of each of the matters in sub-paragraph (d)(i) to (iii);

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Requirement Due date

is enabled to provide feedback to, and raise issues with, a relevant person about the support and services that the child receives;

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Requirement Due date

has access to the home's children's guide, and the home's complaints procedure, when the child's placement in the home is agreed and throughout the child's stay in the home; and

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Requirement Due date

is given appropriate advocacy support. (Regulation 7 (1)(a)(b)(c) (2)(a)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(v)(vi)(b)(i)(ii)(iii))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that children's views are included in all aspects of their care and recorded in their plans.

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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 work as a team where appropriate;

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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; 28 August 2026 Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 7 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

research and developments in relation to the ways in which the needs of children are best met; and

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Requirement Due date

feedback on the experiences of children, including complaints received; and

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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)(b)(c)(d)(e)(f)(g)(i)(ii)(h))

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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; and

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Requirement Due date

have a positive experience of arriving at or moving on from the home.

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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 help each child to access and contribute to the records kept by the registered person in relation to the child. (Regulation 14 (1)(a)(b) (2)(f))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that placement planning is thoughtful and demonstrates the consideration of children's needs, the needs of children already living in the home and the skills and training of the staff team. Additionally, ensure that all children's plans are clear, individualised and reflective of the child's views and wishes. 28 August 2026

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must make arrangements for the handling, recording, safekeeping, safe administration and disposal of medicines received into the children's home.

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Requirement Due date

In particular the registered person must ensure that— 28 August 2026 Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 8 a record is kept of the administration of medicine to each child. (Regulation 23 (1) (2) (c))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that it is known what medication stocks are in the house and who homely medications have been administered to.

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Requirement Due date

The registered person must prepare and implement a policy (“the behaviour management policy”) which sets out—

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Requirement Due date

the measures of control, discipline and restraint which may be used in relation to children in the home. (Regulation 35 (1)(b))

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Requirement Due date

In particular, ensure that recording processes for physical intervention are clear and that all staff are aware of the prescribed physical intervention training definition of a hold and an escort. 28 August 2026

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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: 2880145 9

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Children's home details

Registered provider: Radiant Care Homes Limited

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Children's home details

Registered provider address: Suite W02, Howard Road, Stanmore HA7 1FW

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Inspector

Jennie Christopher, Social Care Regulatory Inspector Inspection report for children's home: 2880145 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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Inspector

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