Family Placement Service Highly Commended

Manx Care has shared that its Family Placement Service has received excellent feedback in a report from the DHSC’s Registration and Inspection Unit.

Here are the main findings from the inspection:

• Safe: The service was found to be safe, with people protected from avoidable harm.
• Effective: The service is effective, achieving good outcomes and promoting a good quality of life.
• Caring: The service is caring, treating people with compassion, kindness, dignity, and respect.
• Responsive: The service meets people’s needs and is responsive. Previous areas for improvement, such as life history work with children and support for adopters, were being addressed.
• Well-led: The service was found to be well-led, with strong leadership, management, and governance ensuring high-quality, person-centred care, supporting learning and innovation, and promoting an open, fair culture.

The Family Placement Team is currently working on its action plan, with a view to completing these actions by July 2025.

Areas For Improvement

The areas for improvement are around private fostering arrangements and internal processes to evidence service progress, with actions as follows:

• Private fostering: The service will begin by reviewing the procedure and guidance, which will support the progress of developments in this area.
• Performance management: The service has already begun to develop the performance management framework, and work is ongoing to embed this in the team.

The Family Placement Service provides home placements for children and young people who are unable to live at home.

The service falls under the Regulation of Care Act 2013 and Regulation of Care (Care Services) Regulations 2013, and as such is required to be inspected.

Family Placement Service

R&I last inspected the service in October 2018, and OFSTED were invited in May 2023 to inspect the Children and Families Service, including the Family Placement Service, and clear improvements have been made.

The latest inspection took place in November and December 2024, to look at the overall quality of the service provided by the Family Placement Service.

From this inspection, an action plan has been agreed to continue the progress made by the team.

The full report can be found here.