The children's home staff induction checklist

Before the first shift

This phase is recruitment and practical preparation, not a welcome tour. Regulation 32 and Schedule 2 set out the suitability information that has to be in place before someone is employed. Could you hand the file over on the starter's first morning without explaining what is missing from it?

There is one narrow route round that. For a permanent appointment, regulation 32(7) lets a person start while the enquiries at paragraphs 3 to 6 of Schedule 2 are still open, but four things have to hold: identity and criminal record information are already satisfactory, all reasonable steps have been taken to obtain the rest, the registered person considers the circumstances exceptional, and the individual is appropriately supervised until the outstanding information arrives.

Ofsted's recruitment guidance says inspectors will want to know what action you took to satisfy yourself the person was suitable, so write the reasoning and the supervision arrangement down at the time. If those conditions don't hold, the person doesn't start.

A shadow shift sits outside all of this. The candidate is not yet employed, so Ofsted's guidance is that they are supervised throughout, cannot be counted in staffing numbers and should not see children's detailed personal information.

How to read the labels. Regulation means the item traces to a numbered duty in the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, and we give the number. Guidance means it comes from the DfE's statutory Guide or Ofsted's published guidance, which set expectations rather than law. Our view means nothing requires it: it is common practice, or simply what we would do. Of the 36 items below, 8 are regulation and 5 are guidance. The other 23 are ours, and a home that does something different and can say why is not doing anything wrong.

Day one and the first week

A flat list hides what can't wait. The first week is about closing the gaps that would matter most if this person were left alone with these children on Friday night. The question we would ask of every item: if it came up on a first solo shift and nobody had mentioned it, could a child be harmed? Coverage is not competence, though. A starter can sign the missing from home procedure and still not know who to ring first at eleven at night with a child two hours overdue.

Nothing in the regulations sets out induction topics, and the statutory Guide names only one: the home's own whistleblowing procedure. So there's no national syllabus, and the list below isn't one either. Ten of these thirteen items are simply what we would want covered.

Weeks two to four

The first week was the building, the rules and the emergencies. These weeks are about the children: their plans, their histories, and why decisions that look arbitrary from outside aren't. A starter who knows that one child doesn't walk to the shop alone has learned a rule. A starter who knows why can handle the version nobody anticipated.

We would spread the online learning across these weeks rather than stack it. Front loading every core course makes the record look finished and costs you twice: few absorb eight modules in a week while learning eleven children's names, and every renewal falls due in the same short window. Set renewals from actual completion dates, and correct recording habits now, while they're still soft.

Weeks five to twelve

This phase is consolidation and a decision, not a stretch of time that elapses. Practice related supervision runs through it at whatever frequency your policy sets, because regulation 33(4)(b) requires the supervision without setting an interval.

Regulation 33(1)(b) makes every permanent appointment subject to the satisfactory completion of a period of probation. It sets no length. Probation that passes because a date came round and nobody objected isn't a decision, and it is the version we come across most often.

The line that matters: working unsupervised

Weak induction records say what was covered. Strong ones say what changed, and the change that matters most early on is permission to work without direct supervision. It shouldn't be the moment the rota got difficult, which is how we most often see it happen.

Regulation 32(7) shows what the regulations do with an incomplete picture: not wait indefinitely, and not carry on as though it were complete, but proceed under supervision while the missing information is chased. Regulation 32(8) requires reasonable steps to supervise anyone else working at the home.

Supervision is the control the regulations reach for while information is incomplete, which is why lifting it is worth treating as a decision rather than a drift, with a date, an authorising manager and a note of the evidence behind it.

No national list authorises solo work, so the judgement is yours to make and to evidence. What we would ask first:

• Do they understand each child's live risks and plans, rather than having signed them?
• Can they respond safely to safeguarding, missing, fire, medication or an allegation?
• Have you observed enough to tell confidence apart from competence, and could the manager who signs this explain the evidence tomorrow?

If any answer is no, we would keep the person supervised, name what would close the gap and set a date to review it. This isn't a verdict on somebody's character or their years elsewhere. It is narrower: what can this person do here, with these children, when nobody is standing next to them?

The qualification clock starts now

Regulation 32(4) requires a care worker to attain the Level 3 Diploma for Residential Childcare (England), or a qualification the registered person considers equivalent, by the relevant date. Regulation 32(5) sets that date two years after they started work in a care role in a home. They don't need it before they start, and a home that turns a good candidate away for not having it has misread the requirement. Regulation 32(6) lets the registered person defer the date where someone hasn't worked in a care role for a prolonged period, or works part time.

Two years sounds generous on day one and stops sounding generous in the second, which is why the start date belongs on the checklist rather than in somebody's memory. Awarding organisations award formal qualifications and approved centres deliver them; Nest does not. See the qualification section in our Ofsted guide.

How long induction should last

There is no statutory induction duration and no required probation length. Any figure quoted for children's homes came from somewhere other than the regulations: a general HR average across every sector, another provider's house standard, or a legacy resource that's no longer current guidance. What the statutory Guide does expect, at paragraph 10.8, is that your workforce plan details the processes and agreed timescales for staff to achieve induction, probation and any core training. That puts the number in your hands, and means the timescale you're asked about is the one you set.

One source is worth naming, because it's cited constantly and isn't what people take it for. The GOV.UK page "Training and developing staff in children's homes" is research report RR438 from January 2015, drawn from case studies in twenty homes between December 2013 and April 2014. It has never been a rule book.

Set the length from the children, the role and the evidence in front of you, then put your timescales in the workforce development plan and hold yourself to them. There is no national number to get wrong. The failure worth worrying about is an induction nobody can confirm finished.

Bank and agency staff

Experience elsewhere isn't induction into this home. Someone who has worked three hundred shifts in residential care still doesn't know that the child in the end room won't come downstairs if you knock twice. The statutory Guide says the registered person should consider an agency worker's skills, qualifications and any induction necessary before they commence work in the home, and Ofsted's recruitment guidance is explicit that regulations 32 and 33 cover staff employed by someone else, including temporary and bank staff.

What the Guide doesn't do is say what that induction contains, so the sheet below is ours. It gets skipped at the moment it matters most: a sickness call at six in the morning, a name nobody recognises, a shift to cover. Decide in advance what your minimum is and who may waive it. The Guide does expect that no more than half the staff on duty at any one time, by day or night, come from an external agency. That's a rota control rather than an induction one, but both give way in the same week.

Two regulations get confused here. Regulation 31, staffing of children's homes, requires that employing anyone on a temporary basis does not prevent children from receiving such continuity of care as is reasonable to meet their needs, and it is where the first aid duty at paragraph (2)(a) sits. Regulation 33 is employment of staff: induction, probation, job descriptions and discipline.

Evidencing induction

The record we would want answers five questions about any item here: who, what, when, what evidence, and who signed it off. Add the date unsupervised work was authorised and the manager who authorised it, because in our experience that's the entry most records are missing.

None of this is preference. Schedule 4 requires a record for each person working at the home, including their qualifications relevant to, and experience of, work involving children. Regulation 37 requires them to be kept up to date and retained for at least 15 years from the date of the last entry, which is longer than most people assume. The statutory Guide also expects a record of supervision for staff, including the manager.

Managers tell us induction is recorded badly for a mundane reason: it happens on shift, in the gaps, and whoever delivers it is often supervising the floor at the same time. Nest Learn can deliver and track the induction, while the Training Matrix holds completions, evidence and renewals in the wider staff record.

Questions