Manager: Anthony Haigh
Ethos of Ivory Villa
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 Ivory to ensure that they achieve their full potential. Holistic individualised child focussed packages of care are evolved for the young people in conjunction with NSCAP and all professionals who are involved with the young people. Ivory provides a nurturing environment which supports the young people to achieve a sense of permanency.
Age of Young People
Ivory 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 Ivory we prefer planned placements as this gives new young people the opportunity to visit the home and meet the staff team and the other young person 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
The house is a detached property. The building consists of a kitchen, lounge/dining room on the ground floor; bathroom and another lounge/games room that staff use as a sleep-in room, two bedrooms for young people on the second floor and a second sleep room for staff in the loft. The office is on the ground floor; this is the only room to which the young people do not have open access.
Ivory 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. All shared areas of the home are accessible to young people.
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.
