Sharma visits local children’s care home

Following recent negative national press coverage of children’s care homes, Calcot Services for Children (CSfC) which runs several children’s care homes in Reading, invited MP for Reading West Alok Sharma to visit Calcot Cottage, which is one of its children’s care homes in Alok’s constituency, to see the quality of care provided locally in Reading.

Alok was given a tour of Calcot Cottage. The staff explained that the home is registered to provide care for up to five young people and has recently again received an ‘Outstanding’ rating from Ofsted. CSfC is one of only a handful of the country’s 1,400 children’s homes to receive an ‘Outstanding’ rating for 3 years or more. In response to the recent press coverage regarding residential child care, CSfC explained that the average age of children in its care is 13 years, compared to national reports of 15.5 years, and the average placement length is 1 year 4 months, compared to national reports of 7 months.

CSfC runs five homes, including Calcot Cottage, and has been providing children’s homes in the local area for the last 19 years. These homes allow the most vulnerable children and young people to have stable, long-term placements, with the view to having the young people achieve permanency within a family wherever possible. Staff at CSfC use a wide range of methods to achieve this goal, including group work, direct work, life story work, comprehensive activity plans and behaviour work. CSfC also employs a Clinical Supervisor who works closely with the staff teams to support and supervise them to carry out therapeutic work with the young people.

Alok said: “I was pleased to be invited to have a look at the quality of provision at Calcot Cottage. The care home is clearly a very good facility and I was pleased to learn that it has received an ‘Outstanding’ rating from Ofsted for all of the last five years.”

Rachel Redgwell, Head of Care at Calcot Services for Children, said: “It was a pleasure to welcome Alok into one of our homes so we could show him the excellent care we provide in Reading. We hope that Alok found the visit enjoyable and informative.”

Rachel continued: “CSfC provides residential care to the most vulnerable looked-after children and we strive to create a family atmosphere, as opposed to an institutional one, for our children. All of our staff care deeply about the quality of the care we provide at our homes, and CSfC will continue to strive to provide outstanding care for the most vulnerable looked-after children.”

Photo: Alok at Calcot Cottage with Sarah Walton (CSfC manager), Rachel Redgwell, Harvinder Singh (CSfC proprietor), Sukhbir Singh (CSfC proprietor) and Les Ellis (CSfC manager).