— Services
Homes newly conceived. Homes already faltering. Every stage, without exception.
P&A's remit is not confined to bringing new properties into the sector. A substantial portion of what we undertake is the sustaining of homes and services already in existence, whether privately held and underperforming, or administered by a local authority labouring to meet its own statutory obligations, together with the provision of the clinical and therapeutic expertise that ultimately determines whether a home's Ofsted rating reflects genuine practice or merely adequate paperwork.
For New Providers
For Existing & Struggling Homes
For Local Authorities
Clinical & Therapeutic Support
Business & Operational Support
01 — For New Providers
Bringing a property into the sector, from assessment to registration.
Set out in full on Operations & Compliance and Investment Structures; summarised here for completeness. The first two services below fall within the standard consultancy fee once P&A is appointed.
Site & Property Assessment
Included within the consultancy fee once appointed. A suitability assessment measured against Ofsted's registration requirements and the specific needs a property may realistically accommodate.
Planning & Ofsted Registration
Included within the consultancy fee once appointed. Management of the C2 change-of-use application and the Ofsted registration process undertaken in parallel, set out in full on Operations & Compliance.
Supported Accommodation Registration (16–17s)
A distinct and newer regulated category: since October 2023, all supported accommodation for looked-after children and care leavers aged sixteen and seventeen requires its own Ofsted registration under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, spanning four defined categories of provision. To operate unregistered is a criminal offence. P&A registers properties under this regime with the same rigour applied to children's home registration, a genuinely less saturated route into the sector for a client weighing both.
Business Planning & Funding Guidance
Considered financial planning encompassing property, registration, recruitment, training and insurance costs, ensuring sufficient resource is in place to sustain the property through the registration period, realistically eight to twelve months, before any income whatsoever begins to flow, a discipline Ofsted's own Fit Person interview specifically tests.
02 — For Existing & Struggling Homes
A registered home in decline does not require a new provider. It requires an honest diagnosis.
An honest and specific diagnosis of what has gone wrong, together with a credible plan to set it right, the calibre of support that has, in comparable instances elsewhere in the sector, converted an Inadequate judgement into a sustained Good within a single improvement cycle.
Mock Ofsted Inspections
An unannounced-style inspection conducted against the identical three SCCIF judgement areas Ofsted itself applies, surfacing precisely what a genuine inspection would discover, in advance of it occurring.
Safeguarding & Practice Audits
A structured audit of safeguarding culture, rather than safeguarding paperwork alone, for a policy correctly filed and a practice genuinely embedded are by no means the same undertaking, and Ofsted's inspectors are trained precisely to discern the difference.
Interim & Consultant Management
Short-term interim leadership, or ongoing consultant support to a Registered Manager already in post, where instability in leadership is itself the underlying cause of declining standards.
Statement of Purpose & Policy Review
A comprehensive review of the home's Statement of Purpose and policy suite against current regulation and case law, correcting the drift that inevitably accumulates in any document set left unattended across several years.
Enforcement & Improvement Notice Response
Direct support in answering Ofsted enforcement action, compliance notices, or the mandatory twelve-month follow-up a Requires Improvement judgement entails, structured precisely against the findings raised.
Culture & Continuous Improvement
The embedding of a genuine culture of ongoing self-scrutiny among staff and management, the single factor Ofsted's own reporting most consistently identifies as distinguishing a Good home from one that is merely compliant.
Regulation 44 Independent Visitor Service
Provision of the independent visitor Regulation 44 requires at least monthly, delivered as an ongoing retainer rather than a solitary engagement, each visit producing the written report upon which the home's own compliance record depends.
Independent Investigations
Independent investigation of allegations against staff, serious incidents or complaints, conducted at arm's length from the home's own management, the standard Ofsted expects wherever impartiality itself is in question.
Leadership Coaching & Mentoring
Ongoing coaching for a Registered Manager or Responsible Individual already in post, distinct in character from initial training, addressing the very judgement in leadership that Ofsted's SCCIF weighs as heavily as any policy committed to file.
03 — For Local Authorities
A sufficiency duty under Section 22G, against a national shortage of registered provision.
Every local authority in England carries an obligation to secure sufficient accommodation for the children it looks after, so far as is reasonably practicable, within its own area. To meet that duty is, for a great many authorities, the defining operational challenge of their children's services function.
Sufficiency Strategy Support
Direct support in developing and evidencing the commissioning strategy every authority must document and publish, in demonstration that its sufficiency duty is being actively discharged.
In-House Residential Capacity Development
Structured support for authorities developing their own in-house residential capacity, reducing reliance upon the independent sector and the higher spot-purchase costs that inevitably accompany it.
Quality Assurance of Commissioned Placements
Independent quality assurance of externally commissioned residential, fostering and supported accommodation provision, verifying that contracted standards are met in practice, and not merely upon paper.
Framework & Block Contract Design
Support in structuring Dynamic Purchasing Systems, block contracts and regional cooperation arrangements, the mechanisms authorities increasingly employ to secure superior value and greater local sufficiency.
Fee Benchmarking & Uplift Review
An evidence-based review of placement fee structures against comparable providers and genuine cost drivers, supporting authorities obliged to demonstrate value for money upon every uplift request.
Improvement Support Following Inadequate Judgements
Structured improvement support for authorities operating under a DfE Improvement Notice or Improvement Advisor following an Inadequate judgement, directed specifically at residential sufficiency and placement stability.
04 — Clinical & Therapeutic Support
Trauma-informed in practice, not merely described in such terms.
P&A provides access to the entirety of the range below as a single coordinated retainer, rather than seven services to be arranged and invoiced individually. The particular constellation of specialists engaged is drawn from this range according to each home's actual clinical need.
Clinical Psychologists
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) & PACE Practitioners
DDP, developed by clinical psychologist Dr Dan Hughes, is an attachment-based therapeutic approach conceived specifically for children who have endured relational trauma. Delivered through the PACE model, playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy, DDP-trained clinical psychologists work directly alongside staff teams to embed trauma-informed practice into daily care, rather than confining it to crisis response alone.
Child & Adolescent Psychiatrists
Clinical Oversight for Complex Presentations
Psychiatric input for children presenting the most complex needs, including polyvagal-informed crisis response and clinical oversight wherever a child's requirements exceed what a standard CAMHS referral pathway is able to address with sufficient speed.
Educational Psychologists
Learning, Behaviour & School Reintegration
Assessment and support wherever developmental trauma has impaired learning and behaviour, undertaken alongside the Personal Education Plan and Virtual School Head to support reintegration into education.
Family & Systemic Therapists
Family Time & Relational Repair
Therapeutic support around family contact, wherever contact continues, and around the wider constellation of relationships a child holds beyond the home itself.
Life Story Practitioners
Structured Life Story Work
Specialist practitioners delivering structured life story work, the sensitive undertaking by which a child comes to understand and hold their own history, rather than experiencing it merely as fragments recorded by others.
Speech & Language Therapists
Unmet Communication Needs
Assessment and therapy addressing speech, language and communication needs, an area consistently under-identified among looked-after children relative to the general population.
Staff Training & Supervision
Embedding Therapeutic Parenting into Practice
Structured training and ongoing clinical supervision for residential staff teams in therapeutic parenting principles, that trauma-informed practice may be sustained from day to day, rather than confined to a solitary training session.
05 — Business & Operational Support
A registered home is only ever as sound as the business functions behind it.
These services are directed principally at independent providers, homes registered outside a P&A conversion, and operators who possess the registration but not yet the surrounding infrastructure.
Referral & Commissioning Brokerage
For a newly registered, independent home with no existing local authority relationships, an empty bed is not a regulatory difficulty, it is a commercial one. P&A builds and manages the commissioning relationships, framework applications and referral pipeline a home requires to reach the capacity for which it is, in fact, registered.
Staffing & Recruitment
Sourcing of Registered Managers, Responsible Individuals, social workers and care workers, upon a permanent, temporary or emergency-cover basis, with safeguarding and safer-recruitment compliance built into every placement, matching the standard already established across the specialist recruitment agencies operating within this sector.
Training & CPD Delivery
Delivery of the mandatory and ongoing training a staff team requires under Schedule 1 of the Children's Homes Regulations, safeguarding, physical intervention, first aid and medication administration among it, kept genuinely current rather than treated as a box completed once at induction and thereafter forgotten.
Acquisition Due Diligence
For a client seeking to acquire an existing, already-registered children's home rather than convert a new one, independent due diligence upon the home's inspection history, financial position, staffing structure and registration standing, undertaken before capital changes hands.
Insurance & Risk Brokerage
Access to the specific insurance cover a registered children's home requires, public and employers' liability, professional indemnity and buildings cover, correctly priced for a regulated occupancy rather than a standard residential policy.
Financial & Payroll Support
Payroll structured around a twenty-four-hour rota, invoicing across multiple local authority payment portals, and the VAT and Corporation Tax position particular to regulated children's social care.
— Whichever Category Applies
A new home, an existing home, a local authority, or a clinical need, the starting point remains identical.
A confidential conversation concerning the specific circumstance before you, prior to anything whatsoever being proposed.
Start the conversation →