A specialist care home and independent school charity that supports boys with a history of harmful sexual behaviour is to voluntarily suspend its services amid concerns around its safeguarding and leadership.

Friends Therapeutic Community Trust, which runs Glebe House in Cambridgeshire, said it had “taken the tough decision to voluntarily” suspend its services from the end of November following concerns raised by children’s social care inspectorate Ofsted.

Following an inspection in June the inspectorate found “widespread shortfalls in the management” at the home including concerns around record keeping.

This meant “leaders and managers did not have the full information” about incidents at the home. The home’s management is also criticised for not ensuring staff receive consistent training in areas such as managing sexually harmful behaviour.

On one occasion a child had to attend hospital after wrongly receiving a double dose of their medication due to an error at the home.

Inspectors noted though that a newly appointed manager at the home had already recognised the need to improve medication procedures and has commissioned outside support to reduce the likelihood of further errors.

Another concern raised by Ofsted was children being able to access “inappropriate material” online, which managers “have not taken strong enough actions to address”.

According to Ofsted there were 11 children placed at the 17-capacity home at the time of their inspection. Five children had moved out and three were in the process of leaving.

Following two further visits from inspectors Glebe House has also been issued with two compliance notices.

At their October visit Ofsted did note children were safer and leadership were committed to changes.

In addition, “following a serious incident” in July the Cambridgeshire based charity carried out an internal investigation, which found that “safeguarding practice had not been good enough for a number of months”.

Glebe House accepts that improvements are necessary but said that it has “not been able to work” on wider changes that were being planned before Ofsted’s visit.

While it is closed the charity has pledged to “focus on rebuilding the organisation and the service and using the opportunity to make all the necessary improvements”.

It added: “As we are in a strong financial position, we are not looking to make any redundancies at this stage. We are working with all of our colleagues and stakeholders to ensure that the right changes are made”.

It is anticipated that the charity’s children’s home and school will be able to reopen in April 2024.

Despite concerns raised by Ofsted in June, inspectors praised staff for preparing children for adult life. Children also benefit from “a well-embedded therapeutic programme”, adding that they have “good relationships” with staff.

Ofsted also said that “staff generally manage incidents well” adding that “behaviours are not ignored or minimised”.

According to the charities register the Friends Therapeutic Community Trust handed in its most recent accounts, for the year ending March 2022, three days late.

For this period its income was £3.15m, including £2.9m from 16 government contracts, and its spending was £2.73m.

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