RESIDENTIAL CHILDCARE SERVICES

J&R Care Ltd offer 52 week care placements primarily for children between the ages of 8 and 16 years old, however we are registered to accept children up to they are 18 years of age.

Pembroke House specialise in working with the most vulnerable and challenging children and provides a safe and secure environment for children to develop and grow.

We work with clearly defined boundaries in a nurturing way. The staff at Pembroke House have a shared understanding of the Residential Therapeutic task and are continually increasing their knowledge in this area. All staff are supported in relevant therapeutic training and appropriate NVQ qualifications or equivalent.

The staff team are committed to working with the unconscious processes which take place with this child group and have the capacity to contain the powerful emotions, which lead to their challenging behaviour. The importance of children needing to regress and giving the opportunity for them to receive basic primary experiences is at the heart of the work we do.

Our work is primarily based on social learning in which we believe children relearn appropriate behaviour through positive role modelling. We believe that how children live together within the home forms an important part of their development. In addition to this we work closely with Independent therapists who can assess and offer different kinds of therapy dependent on the individual needs of the child.

Daily house meetings enable a forum where anti social, challenging behaviour and delinquency can be challenged and where the children can come to terms with the effects of past experiences. Children can within this space challenge authority in a contained way and also challenge each other’s behaviours and therefore enable their own personal development.

We provide unconditional care in that we provide a space where children can express themselves in a way that is not always acceptable within the wider community and yet remain safely contained by staff.

The involvement of the children in the running of their home is important to everyone working at J&R Care and as such the children are involved in the recruitment of staff and new referrals to the home are discussed at appropriate opportunities. The children are also encouraged, through regular meetings with the Directors to revise policies that affect them. Children are appropriately involved with the development and revision of their placement plans.

Understanding the effect and cause of past trauma is fundamental to our work and as such we are only able to admit children in an emergency if all background information is forthcoming. It is preferred that children who are referred to Pembroke House are admitted in a planned way, including pre admission visits to the home.

We work in partnership with the placing authorities and parents to ensure that all the children’s health, care and education needs are met and as such The Registered Manager works closely with social workers and parents in a professional capacity to support and help them to understand the work we are doing.

The children’s family are welcomed at the home to visit and are actively included in periodic social functions for example, birthday celebrations, BBQ’s Sports days, presentation awards, Christmas parties.

We work holistically with all children placed with us and as such have an Independent registered school onsite where children can undertake entry level qualifications, GCSE’s (where appropriate) and Asdan awards. The care staff are also the teaching assistants and this works well with inclusion of challenging behaviour and the staffs knowledge and understanding around the needs of the children and the high ratio of staffing helps contain difficult behaviour where some other EBD schools have failed.

Although we understand that at times this is not possible, we try to work on the ethos of “Never giving up on a child” which means that the staff themselves need to be completely emotionally mature and contained and we employ a Tavistock trained Independent Consultant who meets all who work at Pembroke House on a fortnight basis to enable us to understand our roles and deal with the projected feelings we will experience while working in this environment.

We have an understanding of group dynamics and the effect this can have on all within the home. We are committed to working to enable us to deliver the most consistent quality of care.

We offer opportunities to the children we care for to develop secure attachments with particular adults through the key worker system and recognise the need for as little disruption in this area as possible.

As part of our commitment to enriching the lives of the children with whom we are working, we encourage them to participate in daily activities as part of the normal week and in addition the children are afforded the opportunity to attend group residential activity trips. These have in the past included camping trips to Wales, including mountain walking, White Water Rafting, Sailing courses, cycling and water and adventure activity experiences. We have also worked with PGL activity holidays and other experimental organisations to ensure the children are included and not disadvantaged by being in care. All these activity holidays are within a contained environment and staff enjoy and participate with the children.

Our hope is that the work we do will enable the children to recover from past negative experiences and hopefully move on from us, whether to family placements or independence with a feeling of being genuinely cared for and thought about.

While we recognise that for many children, growing up in a family environment is the best outcome, we also recognise that for some children this is not possible and in this respect residential therapeutic care is a preferred option.