Manager: Lisa Sykes
Ethos of Barwick House
The ethos of the home is underpinned by the organisations model of care. The staff team are committed to the young people who live at Barwick House to ensure that they achieve their full potential. Holistic individualised child focussed packages of care are evolved for the young people in conjunction with Northern School of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy (NSCAP) and all professionals who are involved with the young people. Barwick provides a nurturing environment which supports the young people to achieve a sense of permanency.
Age of Young People
Barwick House can accommodate young people of any age; however normally they are between 8 and 18 years old. The admission process is robust and includes the completion of a shared living risk assessment which allows the young people’s needs to be carefully matched with co-residents, including age, specific needs and stage of emotional development to ensure that the placement is in the best interests of all young people. At Barwick House we prefer planned placements as this gives new young people the opportunity to visit the home and meet the staff team and if there are other young people in placement prior to them moving in. However, we recognise that there may be occasions where emergency placements may be required, and we are sometimes in a position to offer this. This decision would only be made after consideration of the suitability of the young person being referred. It would be expected that a review would take place within 7 working days of the young person’s admission in the case of a planned move to ascertain whether it is in the young person’s best interests to remain at the home or to move onto a different placement. In the case of an emergency admission the review should take place never more than 72 hours after admission.
Facilities
Barwick House is a four bedroom detached upside down house, with a front patio area ideal for summer BBQ’s and a rear drive way. The ground floor consists of a staff office, staff sleep room, kitchen, toilet and a large lounge/dining room. The lower floor comprises of two bedrooms for young people, a staff sleep room, laundry room and bathroom, with shower and bath facilities. All shared areas of the home are accessible to young people. In the interest of confidentiality young people do not have access to the staff office. Barwick House strives to create and maintain a homely environment for the young people to feel safe and secure. The daily routine of the home is centred around the needs of the young people. This is achieved by encouraging the young people to personalise their surroundings by actively involving them in choosing décor and furnishings for the home and personalising their own bedroom. The young people receive an allowance when they first move into the home so that they can purchase items of their choice to personalise their bedrooms. The staff team at Barwick House are dedicated in providing a non-judgemental anti oppressive approach to working with the young people. The staff team at Barwick House are committed to eliminating unfair discrimination in line with the organisations equal opportunities policy. We also embrace that our young people come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and the individual care plans are tailor-made to reflect this. We encourage young people to explore their religious and cultural heritage. Staff are provided with training to ensure they are culturally competent to deal with the individual needs and consult with external partners on how to best achieve this. Staff will support the young people to maintain their religious and cultural observances. All staff will receive Race Awareness and Equal Opportunities training and will base their work practice on anti discriminatory practice with regard to race, gender, disability, cultural and religious needs etc
Our Approach
Consultation with young people is at the heart of all the work we do and the decisions we make about the child’s life are made with their involvement. We provide a nurturing and supportive environment which engages positively with young people and makes every effort to involve the wider system around them to ensure their needs are met.
We work hard to build constructive and warm relationships with young people and have a strong culture surrounding safeguarding issues where staff feel empowered and confident in risk management.
