Agenda item

To provide information to the Corporate Parenting Committee on the progress towards opening Brent’s first residential children’s home.

Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) introduced the report, which provided an update on the Brent Residential Children’s Care Home project. She provided background information that the Council had received DfE funding to open a residential home as outlined in section 3 of the report, and, in terms of the capital workstream, the Council was currently at a place where refurbishment works were being undertaken on the property. The works had started in October 2024 following a procurement exercise and included interior and exterior works, including a roof replacement. It was hoped these would complete by the end of March 2025. The Council had successfully appointed a Registered Manager for the care home and was in the process of advertising for the remaining staff with adverts for a deputy manager, senior residential support staff and residential support staff now live. Documents to register the care home with Ofsted had been submitted and the Council was waiting for Ofsted to complete the process. Palvinder Kudhail (Head of Early Help and Social Care, Brent Council) would be supervising the Registered Manager, visiting the home and ensuring standards were met. The number of staff on site would depend on how many children were in residence, with staff onsite at all times. It was added that the home would be a four-bedroom property with 3 young people residing full-time and one emergency bedroom.

The Chair thanked officers for the introduction and invited contributions from the Committee, with the following points raised:

The Committee noted that the refurbishment works were stated to complete in March 2025, and asked when the home would be operational. Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) explained that Ofsted had not yet completed the registration process, which could take between 3-6 months. The Council had provided all information required and followed up as there was a hope to open the home as soon as possible following completion in March. There were some savings allocated against the home opening, as it was more cost effective to have children placed locally, so officers were pushing hard to get the home open as soon as possible.

Nigel Chapman also provided some information regarding relationship building which the service had been doing in the local area, following the call-in received in relation to the decision to use the site as a residential children’s home from residents who had not been happy with the home being built in their street. Officers had put in a lot of effort with the residents to keep them updated about the project and communicate an appropriate way that was not defensive, which had broken down some of the stigma residents had been holding.

Noting the reference in the report to a working group for the project, the Committee asked who was on that group and whether young people played any role on that. They were advised that the involvement of young people had been more specific, with a range of different engagement activity for young people including competitions and consultations which would continue to take place with young people. This had included a competition to design the bedrooms that the young people would be living in. The working group was made up of staff as it would be looking at day to day operations of the site. Young people had been involved in the creative opportunities of the project, and would also be involved in the recruitment of staff for the site.

It was confirmed that there would be someone on site at all times, including sleeping and waking staff with facilities in place for that. Part of the registration process had required information about ratios, including during the night, to ensure the site was safe and secure.

The Committee asked how easy it was to retain staff to ensure stability for children in this particular sector. Kelli Eboji acknowledged that would be the main challenge. It was hoped that with the recruitment being undertaken currently, this would give the service a chance to get the staffing group up to speed and ready to go prior to the care home opening with learning and development plans in place. The Registered Manager was from Brent so had links in the borough, and was very committed and excited about the project. Palvinder Kudhail added that the Residential Home Network was helping with learning from others, and had highlighted the difficulty in recruiting a Registered Manager, so Brent was very lucky to have a committed and enthusiastic individual recruited to the post.

The Chair thanked officers for the update and drew the discussion to close. She asked for officers to ensure that the young people who had been involved in designing the home were invited to see the home post-works.