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The Children’s Homes Quality Standards Partnership
Supporting Children’s Homes to Implement Quality Standards
The Children’s Homes Quality Standards Partnership
• Action for Children• The Who Cares? Trust• Key Stakeholders • DfE and Ofsted
THE VISION“Residential care needs to emulate the culture and values of excellent homes so that every home is aiming high and achieving the best for the children they care for. No longer should those caring for a child see a placement in a children’s home as the end of the road or second best to a placement in foster care. Residential care can be a positive choice for some children in some circumstances and children should arrive at a children’s home confident in the placement choice and sure that the staff can meet their needs and have their best interests at heart. They should be sure that they will be supported, accepted and kept safe in their new home, with every prospect of leaving more resilient and better equipped to move on with real hope of a brighter future.”
Young People’s Views
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCydlIACP9k
QS Fundamentals
Accountability
Self Evaluation
ImprovementProfessional judgement
Evidencing Outcomes
High expectations and aspirations
Implementing the Quality Standards
Our starting point for the Quality Standards
We knew many excellent homes were providing high-quality
care, focused on the needs of the child and resolute in the
outcomes they wanted to achieve for each child.
We knew of brilliant managers who were leading homes with a
culture of love, support, nurture and protection and rightly
challenging services who let their children down.
We wanted all homes to be doing the same and we wanted all
homes to be able to evidence the progress and experiences of
their children relative to their starting point.
Fundamental principles
A regulatory framework that set high standards for residential
care and ensured homes offered their children the support they
needed to achieve positive outcomes.
High quality care, high aspirations for children who were
enabled to achieve their full potential.
Innovation in the sector with skilled professionals using their
judgement to provide care that met each child’s individual
needs.
The story of the Quality Standards
Listening
Creating
Writing with love
Clearing
My freedoms and favourites
Regulation 45 reports – data, outcomes and actions focused.
Staff – workforce plan, everything in one place, who they are,
what support and training they need.
Got rid of the locker!!!
Emphasis on advocacy and helping children to understand what
is happening.
Children’s views, wishes and feelings standard.
Positive relationships standard.
Connections throughout the regs and across the standards.
What difference will this make for children?
A strong focus on outcomes - evidenced by their progress and
experiences.
Clarity about expectations on staff to build relationships with
them.
Opportunities for their carers to innovate and use professional
judgement.
A regulatory framework focused on them, connecting
regulations and the Guide – helping everyone to be on the same
page.
Passionate Residential Child Care leadership
and the Quality Standards
The resilience of a registered managerReflection - Self evaluation – here and now
• I am – the private ‘you’ – when you’re not at work
• I have – the personal ‘you’ - what you offer in your relationships at work
• I can – the professional ‘you’ – your experience and knowledge of legislation, policy, research, practice evidence and theory
You …
• do an emotionally, physically, intellectually and psychologically demanding job.
• are a resilient, talented and creative person. • have a high level of understanding of the needs of the children in your
care.• are able to explain what is going on for young people and staff, and what
is to be done about it.• multitask all day – often several things at once, the list of what you do in
an hour is very varied - and long! • make a challenging task look easy – anticipating through experience,
knowing that what’s going on along the surface isn’t necessarily what’s ‘really’ going on.
• know the darkest of human life yet the light in children’s homes can be dazzling!
You, your colleagues - and your peers Tim Brighouse writing about being a Headteacher
Six leadership tasks in any setting
4 essential qualities of leadership • regarding crisis as the norm and
complexity as fun • unwarranted optimism • an unquenchable supply of intellectual
curiosity • a complete absence of paranoia or
self-pity
Exactly - the same as for Registered Managers!
• Creating energy • Building capacity • Meeting and minimising crisis • Extending the vision• Securing the environment • Seeking and charting improvement.
Note: a reflective task in the NCERCC Passionate RCC leadership doc Exactly - the same as for Registered Managers!
What the QS say about what you doYour Primary Task – that which cannot be compromised.
• You have a key role in inspiring and shaping a culture of high aspiration for children which is demonstrated through the ethos, outcomes and approach of the home, the high quality care, resources and opportunities offered to the children
• You proactively implement lessons learned and sustain good practice
• You support staff to be ambitious for every child and to gain skills and experience that enable them to actively support each child to achieve their potential.
• You ensure staff understand and can meet each child’s needs.
Key messages of the Quality Standards
Quality Standards have a twin focus Safeguarding/protection
Quality of Care.
The ‘golden thread’ is ‘Think positive’ Positive Relationships
Positive Parenting Positive Behaviour Support
Positive environments.
The Quality Standards move the Residential Child Care task to become even more explicitly methodical and reflective, working not from personal preference or experience but what assessment and evidence tells us is the best way to be using every moment of time with this young person at this time.
What the Quality Standards mean for you in practice
Using what assessments tell us – objective observed information + young person’s and experiential information = detailed care plan – showing you know where the young person is and what to do now, and next. (Baseline, impact, progress, experience) • Now - Directing staff in their work with the young person confirming their
self-esteem, explaining their next step and taking it with them • Outcome - Enabling a young person to be aware of and in control of their
development. Making the social, visible and accountable • Growing up takes time, each child has their own pace - dependency –
independency – interdependency • Recognise that first significant relationship, a primary attachment that
enables all that then follows. Resilience and empowerment come later and cannot be rushed.
Managers make the complex interrelatedness of the Quality Standards
come aliveLegislation and Regulation
Managers make the complex interrelatedness of the Quality Standards
come aliveThe Secure Base
Real life
No finer tribute – a thousand little everyday moves
‘….the absorption into tacit knowledge, unspoken and uncodified in words, that occurred there and became a matter of habit, the thousand little everyday moves that add up in sum to a practice.’
Of Stradivarius workshop after the master’s death The Craftsman Richard Sennent
RCC Management - research
Hicks • The tasks of managers draw on a complex set of skills which
go beyond those which are more generally described as ‘management tasks’. The elements of these contribute to the way in which leadership is established and sustained, or ‘held’, within children’s homes.
• You have expertise in communication, engagement, relationship dynamics, human development and role modelling
• You are both a manager of important routines and holder of the vision and strategic development of a complex organisation
RCC Management – more research
• ‘The role of the head of a home is influential in determining the quality of care.’
Berridge, D ‘Residential care’ in McNeish, D, Newman, T and Roberts, H (eds) (2002) What Works for Children? Buckingham: Open University Pres
• ‘Children’s homes managers have to keep their fingers on the pulses of their homes, build and develop their teams, and provide an example in terms of practice with young people.’
Hicks, L and others (2003) Leadership and Resources in Children’s Homes. York: University of York, Social Work Research and Development Unit
Practical support for the long list of tasks in the Quality StandardsWhat’s available where?
Children’s Homes Quality Standards Partnership • Newsletters, practice papers, workshops, training, website
ICHA (for members)• Monthly support and development meetings• Suites of documents, evidence based references and examples – QS and Ofsted, Self-
evaluation, Professional Judgement, ‘Only Good evidence is good enough’ protocol, Restriction of Liberty; Regulation 45; Outcome Measures report – baselines for impact, experience and progress; Regulation 44 toolkit revised to be complaint with QS.
• Email discussion and development groups and Dropboxes for documents.
NCERCC (forthcoming for LAs and others) • As above• Aide memoire for Registered Managers• Passionate leadership for RCC discussion paper
The task for Residential Child Care in context of Quality Standards Psychological and emotional containment in relational care
‘Absorbing’ the experiences of those seeking their care to better understand and respond helping them to identify, verbalise and make manageable uncontainable feelings• Making plans for emotional containment ( understanding and
responding to feelings)• Organisational containment ( planning to meet needs and for
particular events, behavior management and safe handling plan)
• Epistemological containment ( how to think about the theory and practice required).
Key skill = situational leadership
Being situational
The manager may direct, coach, support or delegate, no choice is better or worse in itself but selected to suit the situation.
• Unable and unwilling - insecure = telling, guiding, establishing, directing.
• Unable but willing - dialogue and/or explanation - ‘selling’, persuading, explaining, clarifying.
• Able but unwilling - insecure - participating, encouraging, collaborating, committing.
• Able and willing – delegating, observing, monitoring, fulfilling.
Expanded situational leadership model Hershey, Blanchard and Johnson, 1996 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory
Transformational Leadership = Quality Standards leadership
Qualities of a Transformational Leader• Inspirational role model• Self-aware – ‘I know what motivates me, what I believe in and value’• Spontaneity – ‘I live in and be responsive to each present moment’• Vision and value led – ‘I act from principles and deep beliefs’• Holism – ‘I see myself as interconnected with others within the whole, ability to see
larger patterns’• Compassion – ‘I aim to express the quality of empathy and ‘feeling with’ someone,
gaining trust.• Celebration of diversity – ‘I value and learn from differences in others –
encouraging creativity’• Positive use of adversity – ‘I learn from mistakes and problems’ • Sense of vocation – ‘I seek to ‘make a difference’ - to work towards something
larger than myself• Achieves goals.
Where are we up to with QS?
The initiation phase.• Try, individually and collectively, to match what the leader
says to what he or she is and what he or she does. • The more successful the leader, the more there will be a
match among those three of ‘speak’, ‘be’ and ‘do’. Task • Being clear about what it means for you - today• Being clear what the Quality Standards say you are to do• Self evaluating the home – use a document like ICHA’s• Action planning to be Good
Where are we up to with QS?
The change phase • Carrying out the Action Plan – see Theory of Change
workshop – link Quality Standards purposes and principles to policy and practice
• Identifying the journey has begun and the stages along the way keeps everyone focused. T
During this phase also Make time to recharge, relax and have fun! This is as important as all the ‘real work.’ Appreciate others, praise others, reward others.
Where are we up to with QS?
The third stage is of decline. • It is an inevitable phase of being together as a group. • In an age of ‘Only good is good enough inspection’ this phase is a
potential difficulty especially after your first successful inspection. • So it’s important staff know the context of Quality Standards and their
inspection is of continually seeking improvement. • It’s why ‘Adequate’, though meeting standards, no longer fits and
‘Requiring Improvement’ is a better match to the task, though perhaps adding ‘Requiring Improvement to be Good.’
• If decline is anticipated, and it will be by an attentive Manager ( or their external manager) then the home refinds its ‘sense of purpose, momentum and direction.’
• The cycle starts again
The Children’s Homes Association of Residential Managers (CHARM)
The ambition
The understanding and value of Residential Child Care practice has to be regained with both colleague professionals across Children’s Services and with the public.
The need for an association – promoting the uniqueness of Residential Child Care.
Residential Child Care needs its own positive professional identity.
• The Quality Standards gives new responsibilities for Registered Managers.
• The collective views of practitioners are vital. • An organisation is required that can provide coordination and
communication to and from practitioners. • A group must exist that can hold and articulate theory and
practice, evidence and experience.• This is a role for CHARM.• CHARM will seek registration as a Health and Care Professions
Council as professional title protected by law. Social workers have to register and so should Registered Managers.
Residential Child Care in its own right
• Residential Child Care workers in other countries are valued highly, with a high professional standing, their role and task is fully appreciated.
• Residential Child Care is not social work - Social workers have their needs represented by several organisations such as the College of Social Work.
• Residential Child Care is not fostering - Fostering has its perspective promoted by Fostering Network (for individuals involved with fostering ) and BAAF (for organisations)
• Residential Child Care is not teaching - Teaching has many organisations representing its general and specific role and task
• Residential Child Care needs its own organisations – together a Residential Child Care professional association with the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care and the Children’s Residential Network reborn as CHARM form an evidenced-informed platform that can speak drawing from the wealth of knowledge and experience.
• For Residential Child Care to take its rightful positive place it needs to build alliances with other like-minded organisations.
•
A strong voice for Residential Child Care
• The experts in what is happening now are those working in children’s homes today.
• Responsibility for what happens in Residential Child Care has to be understood as a correlation not always attributable to the sector as the cause.
• You get positive Residential Child Care in a positive children’s services system.
• For many years Residential Child Care has been use as ‘last resort’.
• This needs to change and we need to use our Residential Child Care resources with purpose, planning
• For a positive use of Residential Child Care
A positive regard for Residential Child Care – positive environments, positive professional parenting
• A profession is defined by the exercising of individual and collective responsibility for current and future practice.
• Practitioners must be willing and supported to exercise professional judgement, challenge poor practice at structural as well as individual levels.
• This requires practitioners being seen (and seeing themselves) as active participants in the development of practice, in their places of work and in the development of the sector more generally.
• Without a professional association where are those enquiring going to get a view from practitioners?
• For practitioners to be involved in all developments of the sector there needs to be a coordinated ‘voice’.
The leadership of Residential Child Care practice
• Registered Managers are recognised as leaders of practice. • Their responsibilities for the practice of the home are stated
throughout the Quality Standards. • Managers are leaders of structure, process and outcome. • They lead and role model goal-oriented work.
CHARMing actions - What CHARM aims to do
Raising awareness about the CHARM and recruiting members. Planning regional meetings. • Along with establishing CHARM the agenda will include discussion on the state of the
sector; • Supporting successful meeting of the Quality Standards • Sharing good practice• Workforce development – what is needed? And how?• News and views• Networking• … and other matters from people attendingEach regional meeting will agree a regional representative to form a link group across the country.Regional meetings of the regional groups will be part of the twice annual regional meetings to be organised by the reborn NCERCC’s CRN. CHARM pages on the NCERCC websiteStarting a fortnightly briefing
CHARMing actions - What CHARM aims to do longer term
Longer term goals • Raise the profile of Residential Child Care as a positive place in a
young person’s life • Creating a space where practitioners can meet and support one
another • Providing regional/national forums for discussing particular
issues/themes • Creating and sustaining learning sets and a developing a community
of practice, where practitioners can share and develop practice that is grounded in evidence and experience
• Plan and deliver a national conference in Autumn 2015• Networking with other like-minded associations • Influencing policy
CHARM – how to join.
• At this stage membership of CHARM is open to all Registered Managers in England.
• You will be kept up to date on CHARM activities through newsletters, mailing list and regional meetings.
• Looking to the future CHARM will need to be funded the subscriptions of its membership. These will be set in relation to other similar professional associations.
• Register your interest by emailing NCERCC your name, name of your home, and region.
• www.ncercc.co.uk
Welcome
Quality Standards Partnership Workshop
Purpose of presentation
The link between the quality standards and inspection
The concept of professional judgement
How inspectors were prepared to work with the new regulations, the framework and revised inspection methodology.
Government’s aim
The introduction of the new Regulations and Quality Standards had three key aims:
to introduce a regulatory framework that sets high standards for residential care and ensures that homes offer our vulnerable children the support they need to achieve positive outcomes;
to ensure that children’s homes provide high quality care, set high aspirations for children and enable them to achieve their full potential, as the best homes already are; and
to support innovation in the sector and enable skilled professionals to use their judgement to provide care that meets each child’s individual needs.
Key documents for providers
We would encourage you to read the following documents:
the Framework for Inspection - this contains details of the framework, the evaluation schedule and the grade descriptors
the Inspection Handbook – sets out how children’s homes will be inspected.
So what is new in Ofsted?
new framework with new judgement structure
new criteria to make judgements from benchmark of good
new judgement of ‘requires improvement’, to replace adequate
new regulations and quality standards
making requirements using the quality standards
using the Guide to make recommendations
a new report template and new style of writing
new guidance for children’s summaries
The new framework and methodology
Defines what good is like
Move from adequate to ‘requires improvement’
Looking for good - if better than good, is it outstanding?
If not yet good - how serious are the weaknesses and what is their impact on children and young people?
Methodology is built on the previous one with greater focus on tracking children and young people
The three judgements
The overall experiences and progress of children and young people living in the home taking into account:
how well children and young people are helped and protected (limiting judgement)
the impact and effectiveness of leaders and managers
Methodology
The inspection handbook has been updated:
Tracking children and young people still at the core of the inspection
Inspectors will want to know how does the home know it is effective and knows it makes a difference?
What is your BEST evidence?
Three pillars of inspection (1)
Care planning
Are they safe? How do you know?
Are children and young people’s needs being met across all aspects of their development? How well?
Are they making progress?
Are they having positive experiences? If not, why not and what action are you taking?
Do staff identify new needs and if so how do they work in partnership with others to meet these needs?
What evidence do they have of impact and progress? How can you test this?
Three pillars of inspection (2)
The underpinning purpose and principles of the home
Are leaders and managers clear which children and young people they are able to help and do they make decisions on this basis?
Is practice underpinned by evidence of what works well and what does not? Is there a shared sense of purpose?
Is the home structured (the environment, the staff and the staffing levels) and are staff supported through training and supervision to achieve the home’s aims and objectives?
Are services delivered to meet children and young people’s needs (as in the SoP)?
Three pillars of inspection (3)
Leadership
Is there strong and effective leadership (at all levels where an organisation)?
Does the registered manager know the strengths and weaknesses of the home?
Does the leadership create a culture of high aspirations?
Do monitoring systems make a difference?
Are the leaders continually looking for ways to improve the care provided?
Methodology - what is new?
Where possible, inspectors will give feedback to children and young people at the end of the inspection
Inspectors will concentrate more of understanding the why, not just the what
They will think about their findings and how this impacts on children and young people.
New annex A.
Methodology
Inspectors will take into account how the home is meeting:
children and young people’s needs as identified in their care plans
the aims and objectives as set out in the statement of purpose
inspectors will have a much stronger focus on whether a home is achieving what it sets out to achieve
how well the home is managed
Inspection Practice
Inspectors will focus on the impact of documents such as risk assessments and how they work in practice, rather than the format
What matters is that they are fit for purpose, and provide sufficient information to staff so that they can care for the children and young people safely and appropriately
Annex A
Annexe A is a document given to providers to complete at the start of an inspection.
Inspectors will use the information during the inspection as key lines of enquiry
Although Annex A looks larger than before - only a few additional questions have been added
Some of the questions are designed to aggregate information about the failures of local authorities, for example which LAs fail to offer return home interviews
Linking the Quality Standards to the Inspection Framework
The quality standards cut across the three judgement areas in the inspection framework
Therefore, inspectors will inspect against the evaluation schedule and use the regulations and the Guide to the children’s homes regulations including quality standards to address any short falls
The rationale for the judgements
We have moved from ‘overall effectiveness to ‘overall progress and experiences’ and what are the implications of this?
Progress and experiences matter and should enable us to take better account of the different types of children’s homes - the balance between the two may shift and change
The help and protection judgement
What is new?
A key judgement so if this judgement is inadequate then it is inadequate overall. However, if it is ‘requires improvement’ then not necessarily ‘requires improvement’ overall - it depends on the issues
Brings together practice and impact
Read across with local authority inspection
Got to focus on the action the home takes to minimise risks - are children safer living here
This will be applied sensitively to different types of services
The impact and effectiveness of leaders and managers
What is new?
Much more about linking this to the other judgements and that is why it is about impact and effectiveness
More emphasis on leaders and managers identifying and making improvements – providers should feel confident that they can explain their weaknesses and what they are doing about it
Now have a quality standard about leadership and management
Emphasis on leaders and managers using their professional judgement
Best fit
No two children’s homes are the same
There is wide diversity across the sector, from one bedded to 60 bedded, from a secure setting to a short break service caring for children with very complex needs
The framework takes this into account and therefore inspectors will apply the ‘best fit’ for the judgement taking into account the specifics of the setting
New report template
Our reports should get to the heart of what matters
Bullet-pointed summary
Should tell the story of your home, what it is like for children to live there
Should be clear what you do well and where you need to make improvements
Children’s summary – more personalised and written in child friendly language
Professional judgement
Professional judgement is a two way process that relies on a dialogue between the inspector and those being inspected
We will encourage managers and staff to demonstrate that how they use their professional judgement
Inspectors will be interested to know how a manager came to the conclusions about practice or made the decisions that they did
An example
Regulation 45 - requires the RP to carry out internal monitoring
The regulations do not state what has to be monitored, it is for the RP to determine
What is right for one home will not be right for another
It is for the RP to decide and what to monitor, demonstrate that they have made improvements as a result
The inspector will be interested to know what was the rationale for subject matter and what difference it has made as a result
Another example – notifications-Regulation 40
Any other incident serious relating to a child which the registered person considers to be serious
What is ‘serious’?
The Guide, on page 63, provides some examples
Ofsted will not provide a definite list as this then becomes the replacement for the schedule
It is for the provider to consider, in the event of an incident, who needs to know and why
Inspectors will be interested to know what action the provider took following a serious incident and in particular what plans are required to prevent a re-occurrence.
Further example – induction of new staff The new regulations do not specify what an induction
programme for new staff should cover.
It is for you to decide what training your new staff need, so that your staff are equipped to carry out their role
Inspectors will want to know how you decided what training to offer your new staff and how this links with your statement of purpose.
Inspectors will look at your induction programme and how it was delivered
Inspectors will ask your new staff if they felt ready to undertake the role and understand the principles and ethos of your home.
These findings will determine whether you have an appropriate induction programme in place
Feed back from inspections
Feed back so far has been positive and encouraging
We recognise that providers remain anxious, in particular about
professional judgement restraint and restriction of liberty of movement notifications new qualification requirements consistency of inspection practice
Training for inspectors
Inspectors had an intensive training period in April about the framework, regulations and Guide.
The training included two short films from providers about their inspection experience, their concerns and worries
They were quite ‘hard hitting’ and made our inspectors consider their practice
A child care consultant has reviewed our materials and in particular the children’s summaries to ensure that they are child friendly
Going forward
If you have any concerns about an inspection try to resolve with the inspector and then if not possible contact the Regulatory inspection manager (RIM)
Each region are planning provider events where all providers will be welcome
Provider feedback on inspection“The inspector (who was new to us, having not inspected any of our homes previously), focused particularly on levels of consultation and checked to ensure that there was good correlation of all records.
There was a much bigger focus than previously on safeguarding, tracking educational achievements and the home’s development.
The inspector didn’t look at policies or procedures at all and there was much more consultation during the two day inspection, than had been encountered previously.”
Provider feedback on inspection
• The inspection was different, more interactive with manager, young person and staff. Inspector spent more time with yp, watching him on Wii and sat down together for breakfast. More evidence based and all about the young people’s experiences.
• The inspector was helpful and understanding.• The judgement was fair and positive.• Recommendations were around children contributing to
their records, advocacy, workforce development plan, clear arrangements to cover management absence
Small group discussion
• New Regulations, New Quality Standards, New Inspection Framework.
• What’s working well? • What is a challenge?
• 15 minutes
Small group discussion
• How do you know you are achieving good outcomes for children when…
• Select a standard from the envelope and discuss it in relation to the question above.
• 15 minutes
Small group discussion
What gets in the way of achieving good outcomes for children when……
• Select a standard from the envelope and discuss it in relation to the question above.
• 15 minutes
