Why Choose our Homes?

When you place a young person in one of our children’s homes you have the comfort of knowing that the staff who are caring for them are trained to a high standard. This fits within the philosophy of a County Council that has a firm belief in continued professional development. Our homes are always appropriately staffed and have the reassurance of backup from support services in this leading local authority.

With our team of highly motivated staff, you can be certain that young people placed with us will get the best care and guidance to help them as they go towards adult life.

To assist with this, Residential Services have adopted a Restorative Justice approach within children’s homes to help young people take responsibility for their actions and find ways of resolving difficulties for themselves.

What can we offer?

We have:

• Long standing experience of working with young people, their families and professionals from County Durham and other local authorities.
• Tight recruitment policies based on safe-guarding children and young people, carefully monitored by the County’s human resources staff.
• Good quality mandatory training for all residential staff in line with National Minimum Care Standards.
• All eligible staff working to, or qualified to, at least NVQ level 3 Child Care.
• Most senior residential staff working towards, or have achieved NVQ level 4 Child Care or Management or both.
• Homes managers qualified to at least NVQ level 4 Child Care/DipSW and NVQ level 4 Management/Diploma in Management, or working towards Registered Manager’s Award.
• Excellent staff retention resulting in well experienced, well developed work-force with a wide range of skills and interests,
• Excellent staffing structures with a good ratio of staff to young people appropriate to the Statement of Purpose of the home.
• Management support to the home provided by a three-tier telephone back-up system ‘24/7’.
• Monthly multi-agency health co-ordinator meetings to ensure that all young peoples health needs are being addressed.
• Monthly education co-ordinator meetings which provide expert support to staff in order to promote educational attainment for young people.
• Regular meetings between staff, police, youth engagement workers and other professionals to identify and work with young people at risk of offending.

Residential Services for Children and Young People