'Volatile and dangerous' children's home closed

A children's home has been closed after Ofsted inspectors found "serious and widespread failures" putting children at "significant risk of harm" - including an allegation a member of staff hit a child.

Somerset Council said it was also closing a second home in the £80m award-winning Homes and Horizons project, which saw the council buy eight family-sized homes for the "most vulnerable" children in its care.

Homes2Inspire, which runs the service, said it accepted the findings, took them seriously and had already started to implement lessons learned. It said it was dealing with increasingly complex children and struggling to recruit staff.

Somerset Council said it will "remodel" the service.

The home, which cannot be identified for safeguarding reasons, was closed in May after Ofsted suspended its registration in December following an inspection, when the only child living there moved out.

The inspection of the now-closed home found the one child living there felt "unsafe" and was "exposed to significant and ongoing risk of harm" - including from fire.

The report said there had been "highly volatile and dangerous incidents, which have been escalated by staff's combative and inflammatory responses".

An inspector wrote: "On one occasion, a member of staff is reported to have threatened and hit the child. On another occasion, a member of staff used an unauthorised physical intervention technique.

"There are serious concerns about staff practice and conduct. Several investigations are ongoing, and some members of staff have been suspended to protect both themselves and the child."

Two managers left the home in quick succession, the inspection report said.

"Staff lack the skills and experience required to help the child stay safe. On one occasion, staff ran and locked themselves away from the child," the report said.

The Homes and Horizons project saw Somerset Council buy eight family-sized homes for children in care in the county at a cost of £8m.

In November last year, it agreed to spend a further £3m buying three more properties, one of which was due to open this August.

The day-to-day running of the homes was through a £70m 10-year contract with Homes2Inspire, a registered Ofsted provider owned by the Shaw Trust charity.

Multi-agency support was on hand from services like the young people's mental health services (CAMHS) to specialist education provision.

The model was seen as a departure from what has been the trend across the sector in the past few decades, which has seen fewer council-run residential children's homes and greater reliance on private providers - which can often mean young people are sent far from where they live.

A Homes2Inspire spokesperson said: "As we saw an increase in the complexity of needs of some children, staff needed additional skills to help them respond to challenging situations and provide the best care.

"But we faced real difficulties in recruiting and retaining experienced staff and managers, and that had an impact on the consistency of support we could provide to these very vulnerable children and our staff."

They said the service had lost some experienced managers which made it harder to maintain standards.

A spokesperson from Somerset Council said: "While we develop plans for a future model of residential care that builds on what has worked well, some homes will be closed temporarily.

"We are taking our learning from the past five years, looking at changes in the children's residential market. This is a temporary move only. The homes will be reopening.

"The council will be engaging with the children's residential care market in August and insight from them will also inform how we revise the model."

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