Staffing and Safe Recruitment
Relevant Regulations
Regulation 10 Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023 – Workforce Plan
Regulation 18 Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations – employment of staff
Regulation 19 Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations – temporary staff
Related guidance
The registered person must have a Workforce Plan which fulfils the requirements in the Regulations concerning the recruitment and employment of all staff:
- The management and staffing structure;
- The experience and qualifications of staff and managers, and any further training required for those staff and managers;
- The processes and timescales for staff to complete induction, probation and core training, including in safeguarding and health and safety;
- The process for managing and addressing poor performance;
- The process and timescales for supervision and monitoring of staff.
The Workforce Plan should set out the management and staffing structure, including any arrangements in place for day-to-day oversight and management of individual premises and the responsibilities staff have in this. This should set out how staff will support young people, including whether for example this is through on-site or floating support or a combination of both models. This should include the staffing levels and how staff respond flexibly to unexpected events to promote continuity of support.
The registered person is responsible for ensuring that all staff consistently follow the Service’s policies and procedures for the benefit of the young people accommodated in the setting. Everyone working in the Service must understand their roles and responsibilities and what they are authorised to decide on their own initiative. There should be clear lines of accountability. The Service must have clear arrangements in place to maintain effective management in each setting when the registered service manager is absent, off duty or on leave.
The Workforce Plan should detail how the registered person will manage and address poor performance, and any action being taken to improve this, as well as how staff will be supervised and monitored. Where relevant, this should include the planned management structures in place below the registered service manager and how staff are held to account by the registered person.
The registered person must:
- Keep the Workforce Plan under review and, where appropriate, revise it, and
- Make a copy of the Workforce Plan available on request to Ofsted.
The Service must be properly staffed and resourced to meet the needs of the young people. The registered person should plan staffing levels to ensure that they meet the needs of young people and can respond flexibly to unexpected events or opportunities. Staffing structures should promote continuity of support from the young person’s perspective. Due regard should be given if a young person complains or shares a view on how the staffing structure could be improved to promote the best support for them and appropriate action should be taken.
Given the diverse range of settings within supported accommodation, there will be different levels of supervision and staff numbers on site at any one time depending on the setting category and the needs of the young people accommodated in the setting. Where a setting does not have staff on site 24 hours a day, the registered person must have adequate arrangements and sufficient risk mitigations in place to ensure the ongoing safety and support of young people, including access to 24/7 on-call support. The registered person should ensure appropriate arrangements are in place to keep staff safe at work such as lone working procedures or a manager on-call policy.
Contingency plans should be prepared in the event of a shortfall in staffing levels. When considering the number of staff at the setting and shift schedules, the registered person should make an assessment of the implications for young people’s support, including any likely risks. This contingency plan should be recorded and available for inspection by Ofsted and the accommodating authority.
The responsible person should ensure that staff understand their role and specific responsibilities in relation to the support provided to young people in the Service and how this contributes to the Service delivering against its Statement of Purpose. Staff should understand where they sit in the provider’s organisational structure and what arrangements are in place to support their training and professional development.
The responsible person should ensure that staff understand and feel confident to deliver the Service’s process for admitting a young person to the setting, including any additional processes where that admission is arranged at short notice.
Staff will be suitably vetted and qualified and able to deliver high-quality services to young people. The manager should ensure that staff can access appropriate facilities and resources to support their training needs and should understand the key role they play in the training and development of staff in the Service. See also: Fitness and Qualifications of Staff Procedure.
Staff will work collaboratively to provide consistency and stability, with clear responsibilities and accountabilities to ensure that staff have a sense of shared ownership about their practice. The responsible person must ensure that, where appropriate, staff work together to meet the needs of the young people placed. This includes where external staff are employed by the provider to deliver all or parts of the package of support to the young people accommodated in the setting.
Arrangements for recruitment and appraisals are robust and include young people as appropriate.
Staff should be made familiar with the Service's internal whistleblowing procedures through the induction process.
For the protection of staff and young people in the Service, depending on the category of setting, the registered person may choose to maintain and store records of staff rosters as well as records of actual hours, which may be electronic.
In a supported lodgings service, as a part of the matching process of a host with a young person, discussions should be had between the host, young person, registered person, accommodating authority, local authority area for the accommodation if the accommodation is in a different area to the accommodating authority, and relevant social or support workers to set expectations and agree arrangements for the placement. Hosts should be involved in the development and review of plans for support to ensure the young person’s needs are met as well as the safeguarding of the young person, the host, and any other residents in the host’s home, including any other children. Discussions may include agreeing hours or a schedule for when the host is typically home and available to the young person to offer support.
The registered person must recruit staff using recruitment procedures that are designed to ensure young people’s safety.
See also Fitness and Qualifications of Staff Procedure.
The registered person is responsible for ensuring that recruitment practices are in place that ensure staff are fit to work with young people and that they have the relevant skills, qualifications and recent experience to meet the needs of young people. This includes where the registered person is recruiting and managing supported lodgings hosts.
Careful recruitment and regular monitoring of staff is used to prevent unsuitable staff from being recruited and having the opportunity to harm young people or to place them at risk. The relevant authorities and professional bodies will be informed of any concerns about inappropriate adults. Commissioners of our Service will ensure that appropriate checks have been carried about by the Service in relation to safe recruitment and employment checks.
References should be sought as part of employment checks. You should always check out a reference if you have any doubt about its quality or reliability.
You may not be able to obtain a reference from a previous employer, for example because they are no longer operating, or have died. If this happens, you should ask for another reference from another previous employer.
You must try, as far as possible, to find out why a prospective staff member's previous employment ended, if their previous jobs involved working with children, young people or vulnerable adults. You should try to obtain this information from their most recent employer, and other employers where relevant. For example, this could be a conversation with the previous employer and you record the detail of this on the staff member's file.
See also DBS Digital Identity Verification Guidance.
The appropriate level DBS checks must be carried out before a person is appointed to engage in Regulated Activity within the Service. To determine which level of DBS check a role is eligible for, refer to the DBS Eligibility Guidance (GOV.UK).
The information contained in an up-to-date DBS certificate must be reviewed to decide whether this reveals any concerns about the person's suitability to work with children/young people. If there are concerns, the information must be used to come to a conclusion whether or not to appoint the person. Providers and managers must keep up-to-date with what constitutes Regulated Activity and fully investigate any information that indicates that a person may be barred from working with children or vulnerable adults.
Anyone who is barred from work with children is committing an offence if they apply for, offer to do, accept or do any work constituting Regulated Activity. It is also an offence for an employer knowingly to offer work in a regulated position, or to procure work in a regulated position for an individual who is disqualified from working with children, or fail to remove such an individual from such work.
Once appointed, a person must continue to meet the remit-specific regulatory requirements after the initial recruitment process.
In relation to the Disclosure and Barring Service checks, the following must be recorded:
- The date the DBS check was carried out;
- The DBS certificate number;
- The name of the person who checked the original certificate;
- Whether there was any information or concerns arising from the check that required further attention before you decided to appoint the individual;
- The name of the person who carried out the update check, if the individual is registered with the DBS update service;
- If concerns were identified once a person was appointed, steps you have taken to review a person's suitability to continue to work with children and young people;
- What actions you take if a person changes their role after they have been appointed;
- The actions you have taken in order to protect children from contact with unsuitable persons; this may include referral to the DBS or other relevant authorities.
Disclosure and Barring Service checks should be:
- Treated as confidential;
- Kept secure;
- Destroyed as soon as no longer required.
Information on checks for candidates who have spent time abroad or have come from abroad can be found at: GOV.UK, Criminal records checks for overseas applicants.
Please note: A DBS check has no official expiry date. Any information included will be accurate at the time the check was carried out. It's up to the employer to decide when a new check is needed.
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), operate an optional Update Service which is designed to reduce the number of DBS checks requested.
Instead of a new check being necessary whenever an individual applies for a new role working with children and young people, individuals can opt to subscribe to the online Update Service. This will allow them to keep their DBS certificate up to date, so that they can take it with them from role to role, within the children's workforce.
Employers do not need to register, but can carry out free, instant, online status checks of a registered individual's status. A new DBS check will only be necessary if the status check indicates a change in the individual's status (because new information has been added). See GOV.UK for more information.
For the latest guidance on DBS referrals, see the GOV.UK website.
If you use the DBS update service to check the status of an individual's DBS certificate, you should be able to demonstrate how you manage and record details of any check you carry out.
As part of the recruitment process, the employer/prospective employer must also check that the applicant has the right to work in the UK.
See: GOV.UK: Checking a Job Applicants Right to Work.
Employers can be penalised/fined if they employ someone who does not have the right to work and they did not carry out the correct checks, or did not do them properly.
If you are recruiting a permanent member of staff, you can, exceptionally, allow a person to start working at the Service if you only have the proof of identity and the DBS certificate, while you continue to make enquiries. For example, you may need to employ additional staff quickly. If you do this, the person must be supervised when working with young people. You must be able to provide evidence that you have taken reasonable steps to obtain the information. There may be occasions when, despite your best efforts, you are not able to obtain some of the required information. Whilst this might happen occasionally, it should not happen regularly. It is not good recruitment practice to employ staff without all the required information. If you are unable to obtain all the relevant information, inspectors will want to know what additional action you took to satisfy yourself that the person was suitable and, if any relevant information was missing, what action you took to mitigate any risks you identified.
The use of external agency staff for different kinds of floating support may play a part in the support package for many providers of supported accommodation and can be a positive choice to complement the skills and experiences of the permanent workforce. The registered provider is accountable for the entirety of the support package and this includes ensuring any external agency staff meet the general fitness requirements of staff and have suitable skills and qualifications to deliver a high-quality service that meets the support standard. The use of agency staff should be carefully monitored and reviewed to ensure young people receive continuity of support and can build and maintain strong relationships with the adults who support them.
If you need to use an agency member of staff at short notice, and you have not previously used this person, as a minimum, you should check their identity and obtain written confirmation from the agency that it has carried out the relevant suitability checks. You should review the evidence that the person is suitable as soon as possible, for example, the next working day. In these circumstances, the agency staff member must not be in sole charge of the Service.
The registered person must ensure that the employment of any person on a temporary basis does not prevent young people from receiving such continuity of support as is reasonable to meet their needs.
The registered person should:
- Ensure that each employee completes an appropriate, effective and robust induction;
- Ensure that each permanent appointment of an employee is subject to the satisfactory completion of a period of probation; and
- Provide each employee with a job description outlining the employee's responsibilities.
The Workforce Plan should set out the arrangements for inducting staff.
As a result of effective recruitment and induction, staff should feel confident they have the skills to keep young people safe and provide them with high-quality support.
The registered person must ensure that all employees:
- Undertake appropriate continuing professional development;
- Receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience; and
- Have their performance and fitness to perform their roles appraised at least once every year.
See also: Staff Supervision and Appraisal Procedure.
The registered person must operate a disciplinary procedure which, in particular:
- Provides for the suspension from work of an employee if necessary in the interests of the safety or welfare of young people; and
- Provides that the failure on the part of an employee to report an incident of abuse, or suspected abuse, whether past or present, in relation to a child/young person to the registered person, an officer of Ofsted, an officer of the local authority in whose area the premises is located, an officer of the accommodating authority or a police officer) is a ground on which disciplinary proceedings may be instituted.
Clear recruitment records will be kept by the Service which that summarise the vetting and recruitment checks.
The registered person should monitor and review the patterns and trends of staff turnover, whether agency or directly employed, and be able understand and address any negative trends.
Last Updated: December 11, 2023
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