020 Property for children's homes, and inspecting property for 16-18 year olds with Laura Richardson
In this episode Laura Richardson shares her experience of working in and managing residential children's homes. She explains what factors will influence providers choosing a property for a children's home and what property is suitable and the kind of adaptations that may be needed. She discusses the current regulation for children's homes but how providers supporting young people aged 16-18 do not need to be regulated. Laura is now offering a service to ensure best practice for providers supporting young people in this unregulated area of care by offering inspections that mirror those required by OFSTED for younger children.
Laura Richardson is mum to three children and has worked in Residential Childcare for the last 18 years. She has experience as a Dual Registered Manager, ISO 9001 Quality Manager and has also worked as a Quality Assurance and Training Manager. More recently she has become self-employed and now predominantly provides Independent Regulation 44 Visits to children’s homes (as well as other services), as is required in the Children’s Home Regulations 2015.
Laura now also providing independent quality assurance visits to 16-18 years supported living care leavers services. This is currently unregulated, but regardless of opinions on whether this is appropriate, there are more and more of these services opening, and placing authorities are using them.
As a provider it’s important that quality of your support, safeguarding and progress of young people is monitored. Reports produced from independent visits will be sent to placing authorities, as well as managers and will contain recommendations for areas that can be improved.
Laura suspects that following the current review of children's social care, these ‘grey area’ provisions may well become regulated. Laura is based in North Staffordshire and covers the Midlands and some of the North West at present. She does work in collaboration with other consultants so services may be sourced in other areas.
Laura can be contacted by LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-richardson-98a10451
Lisa Brown became a property investor after a long nursing career. She initially developed heritage properties and then a chance encounter led her to discover supported living. She realized this was a powerful way to invest in property while creating homes for people with a support need.
Lisa set about discovering why property investors struggle to let their properties to supported living providers and why providers struggle to find property to let. She has been educating people, raising awareness and working on solutions to this problem ever since. Lisa is the host of the Supported Living Property Podcast and YouTube channel and formed The Supported Living Property Facebook Group.
Lisa is founder of The Supported Living Property Network, a place for property investors and supported living providers to connect, build relationships and communicate about property they have available and/or need. Membership includes access to training courses, monthly training events and networking events and access to The Supported Living Property Network Conference.
To find out how you can join The Supported Living Property Network please follow this link: https://www.supportedlivingproperty.uk/the-supported-living-property-network
Lisa has written a free guide for you:
If you are a property investor download this free guide to help you find providers to lease your property: https://www.supportedlivingproperty.uk/free-guide-for-property-investors
If you are a provider who is looking for property to lease then download this free guide to help you find property: https://www.supportedlivingproperty.uk/free-guide-for-providers
These interviews are also available as podcasts from your usual podcast provider, just search for The Supported Living Property Podcast. Please make sure you click the "subscribe" button so you don't miss an episode.
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