9.2.6 Moving In and Leaving the Home |
Contents
1. Context
The Children Act 1989 and The National Minimum Standards for Children's Homes and Regulations, 2011 require, wherever possible, careful pre-planning for young people moving in and leaving the home.
2. Scope
Care Matters (2006) further highlights the need to reduce unplanned moves wherever possible and develop stable placements.
The legislation and government initiatives support the view that a Home's Statement of Purpose should not be compromised. Young people should not therefore be placed in emergency situations into residential units that do not accommodate this arrangement within their Statement of Purpose.
The overall emphasis should be on helping young people to move into and leave the home in a planned and sensitive manner.
3. Procedure
| 1.0 | All placements should be on a planned basis, unless, as part of its Statement of Purpose, a home is designed to take emergency placements. |
| 1.1 | Prior to moving in a young person should have introductory visits to the home. These pre-placement visits should enable the young person to meet and be introduced to other young people living at the home and staff working at the home; thus enabling all parties to begin to become more familiar with the new situation. The positive and negative impact of a new young person moving into the home, on all young people should be accounted for and responded to, thereby developing and embedding best practice into the moving ‘in’ and ‘on’ process. The impact and how this has been responded to, should be evidenced within the recording on each individual Daily Living Files. |
| 1.2 | At the pre-placement visit the Care Plan and Placement Plan should be discussed with the young person, at a level that the young person can understand. In this way the planning process begins to address the needs of the young person from the outset. |
| 2.0 | When an emergency admission is unavoidable, the home should already be geared to receiving young people in such circumstances. Details of how emergency admissions are handled should be included in the Statement of Purpose for the home. The details must include an acknowledgement that this is a potentially unsettling time for all concerned. Young people should be helped as much as possible to deal with the move. This includes helping the young people already living at the home as well as the individual young person who is moving in. Staff should be aiming to meet the needs of the newly admitted young person regardless of whether the admission is planned or unplanned. |
| 2.1 | Following an emergency admission, a Statutory Review should be initiated as soon as possible and never more than 72hours after the admission. This meeting expressly addresses whether the young person should remain at the placement or whether it is in their best interests to be moved to another placement. |
| 2.2 | In emergency admission contexts, the Care Plan and essential written information should be provided to the home by the social worker or, in the absence of a social worker, by the team manager as soon as possible but no later than 72 hours after the placement began. In the absence of written information being available at the time of the emergency placement, the Social Worker or Team Manager should give essential information verbally to the staff at the home. Such essential information would include any safeguarding, welfare or safety issues concerning the individual young person as well as any issues that may compromise the safety or welfare of other young people. |
| 2.3 | In emergency admission situations a Placement Plan should begin to be drawn up with the involvement of the young person and, where appropriate his/her family, as soon as the young person moves into the home. If the emergency review decides it is in the interests of the young person to move to another placement, the initial Plan can move with the young person. |
End