By Lauren Monaghan, Junior Local Democracy Reporter
Children’s homes across Nottinghamshire are performing well following inspections – but services are currently running on reduced staff.
The county council runs five internal children’s residential homes, with three mainstream homes and two that provide care for those with disabilities.
The council’s Corporate Parenting Panel met yesterday (October 15) to discuss updates on performance.
Both homes catering for children with disabilities, which are not named in full in the report, have no ongoing safeguarding issues and services at a ‘high standard;.
Papers discussed by the committee show an inspector’s comments of one home reading: “The kindnesses of staff and attention to the small and the big stuff is clear. Children being able to try something new and do things for themselves. Managers wanting to find solutions to make a difference to a struggling family.”
One mainstream home recently received ‘Good’ Ofsted ratings across all areas, marking a significant improvement from its previous lower ‘requires improvement’ grading due to staffing issues.
Papers containing an inspector’s report of this home highlighted new managers working effectively with the team, completing in depth inductions and offering bespoke training that has “significantly raised standards”.
This home also had outstanding practice, strong management and a child-focused environment.
Councillor Sinead Anderson (Con) who chairs the committee visited a disability specialist home in July this year and praised its service.
She said: “I was impressed by the individual children’s needs were catered for in that home- they are quite profound disabilities.
“Their needs were really catered for and tailored to, we saw children using quite a lot of sensory equipment, with textures, it was lovely, you could see the interaction with the staff.”
But the homes are lacking some staff positions, with one having two vacancies, and the other having a management vacancy and two mainstream homes each having three empty posts.
Recruitment for vacancies across these homes remains ongoing.
Councillor Francis Purdue-Horan (Ind) questioned why there had been some difficulties in recruiting staff.
He said: “We shouldn’t be worried about recruitment- how do you capture that enthusiasm for people to join the industry, contributing to society- a very rewarding thing.”
Davinia Lawton, Service Manager of Residential Services, said: “We want the right people in the right place, what we don’t want is taking people on that are going to cause us long term problems for the sake of having people- it doesn’t work and it won’t work.”
Despite the homes’ success, Councillor Tracey Taylor (Con) pointed out an issue with one of the homes’ number of children and how these are subject to a ‘match’ process.
One mainstream home with two existing children had plans to welcome a further two by the end of October, based on ‘matching’ the personalities and needs of all the children who will live together.
The third child will no longer be homed there – which she said poses questions regarding the matching process and child four’s future transition to the home.
Cllr Taylor said:”Perhaps we ought to frame our report differently if we are saying child three’s match is critical to child four’s match being possible- are we being overly optimistic in what we are saying?
“It doesn’t feel like to me that we are actually on top of it, because we need two matches, not one.
“In a way we have over promised, we’re not just putting pegs in holes, we are talking about individual personalities.”