About Oasis House
A home built for two
Smallness is not a constraint. It is the organising idea.
Oasis House is a small children’s home for up to two young people aged 5–17. Its scale is deliberate: care begins with knowing a child, not managing a group.
It is designed to work as a household rather than as a unit. Meals and homework happen around the same table; familiar adults notice the detail of a day. Domestic life is not incidental here. It is part of the care model.
A real home
A house first. A service built carefully around it.
Oasis House has been prepared as a house first and a service second. A sitting room, kitchen table and garden are not decorative details: together they shape how a child experiences everyday life.
Room to be together, and room to step away — the scale that lets care stay personal without the home feeling institutional.
See life at Oasis HouseSmall by design
Why two children
Two. The whole proposed capacity — and at that scale, an adult can hold the detail of a whole child in mind: what happened at school, what they did not eat, why today feels harder than yesterday.
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Because a child has to be known.
In a group, a quiet child can go a long time before anyone notices they have gone quiet. With two, that is not possible.
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Because the same adults matter.
Keeping the same people around a child is a therapeutic decision, not a rota one. A small home is what makes it possible in practice rather than in principle.
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Because care can stay individual.
Two children, not a peer group. Matching is a question about whether these two particular children can live well together — and it is worth answering slowly.
Our ethos
Every child has the right to feel safe, valued, respected and supported in achieving their potential.
Children may arrive after trauma, loss, disrupted relationships and instability. The model is trauma-informed, attachment-aware and relationship-based; it asks adults to understand behaviour as communication rather than defiance.
Our principles
Six principles, lived in the everyday
They shape care planning, safeguarding, education support and how we check our own work.
- Safety
- Physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing, held by effective safeguarding and by relationships a child can rely on.
- Respect
- Kindness and compassion as a working method, and a child’s individuality, identity, culture and rights treated as facts about them rather than as adjustments to make.
- Relationships
- Trusting and consistent adults, because stability and belonging are what make everything else possible.
- Participation
- Children encouraged to say what they think and feel, and involved in the decisions that shape their own lives.
- Resilience and growth
- Confidence, emotional resilience, independence and the ordinary life skills a young person will need next.
- Accountability and improvement
- High standards kept by reflecting, learning and checking our own work — not by assuming it is already good enough.
Outcomes, measured from where a child actually started
The model is designed to support stability, belonging, trusting relationships, engagement with education and growing independence — and to protect children from harm while that progress is made.
Success looks different for every child, and progress is measured against their own starting point — not against someone else’s.
- Starting point The child as they arrive, not a comparison with somebody else.
- Progress, observed Daily life gives trusted adults the detail from which change can be noticed and recorded.
- Reviewed and adapted Care plans are reviewed and adapted as a child’s needs and progress change.
Registration status
Honest about the stage we are at
Oasis House is currently progressing through the Ofsted registration process. We welcome enquiries from local authorities, commissioning teams and professionals who would like to discuss future placement availability. Referrals will be accepted once registration has been granted.
Everything on this page describes a home prepared to operate under the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and the Quality Standards — the standard the registration process is examining.
Keep reading
Where to go next
Placing a child, or planning ahead? Discuss a Future Placement