Our team
A child does not meet a staffing model. They meet whoever walks through the door.
Everything on this page is about one thing: making sure the adults in this house are few enough, and here long enough, to be known.
In a home for up to two children, a team is not a department — it is a handful of people a child will see most days. The wider team is currently being recruited, so this page describes how it is being built rather than introducing people who are not yet in post.
Before you read on
There are no names on this page yet
Somebody appears here once their appointment is confirmed and they have agreed to it in writing — and in a photograph only if they have agreed to that too. Today that means nobody, and we would rather say so than fill the space.
How many adults there are matters far less than who they are, and how long they stay — and a commissioner can ask us anything.
Continuity
Keeping the same people is a decision about care, not about staffing
Children who have lived with disrupted relationships do better with adults who stay. That is most of what the staffing plan is for.
Retention is part of the care model
Keeping the same people is treated as a therapeutic requirement, not a staffing statistic.
Familiar cover before unfamiliar cover
Where extra hours are needed, the intention is relief staff a child already knows — a small bank of our own, not whoever an agency sends.
Shifts that join rather than swap
Rotas will be built with planned handover overlaps, so a shift change is a join — not one person disappearing and another arriving.
Nobody works alone until they are ready to
New staff will be assessed as competent before taking responsibilities on independently — continuity is also about who is ready to be relied on.
What a child is given is not a number of adults. It is a rhythm they can predict.
The leadership being built
Strong leadership starts with the right people
Oasis House is building its senior leadership team as it progresses through registration. Rather than fill this page with names that are not yet real, here is what those appointments are being made to carry.
Clear accountability
One person answerable for this home — for its practice, its records and its decisions. Not a committee, and not a head office three counties away.
Safeguarding oversight
Senior sight of every concern raised here, and of the arrangements that make raising one straightforward rather than brave.
Consistent practice
The same standard on a Tuesday afternoon as at three in the morning. That is a leadership job long before it is a staffing one.
Senior leadership
Our Registered Manager and Responsible Individual details will be updated here as appointments are confirmed. Until then this page will not carry a name, a photograph or an outline where a person should be. An appointment that has not been made is not something to imply, and a commissioner is entitled to know the difference.
The team being built
Three roles, recruited slowly and on purpose
All three are open now — described here as a shape, advertised in full on the Vacancies page.
Being recruited
Deputy Manager
The person who will set the tone of this house from inside it — on shift, alongside the team, coaching in the moment rather than reviewing it afterwards.
Being recruited
Senior Support Workers
Experienced practitioners who will hold the shape of a shift, with a senior person available whenever the home is staffed.
Being recruited
Support Workers
The adults a child will actually see most days — the role the whole home rests on.
How the home is designed to be staffed
Needs-led rather than ratio-led: our staffing model provides for a minimum of two staff on duty during the day and evening, with additional staffing where a child’s assessed needs require it. Night arrangements will be determined by the needs of the children in placement, with on-call management support outside office hours.
Staffing for an individual child would be agreed at the matching stage, before any admission, and kept under review afterwards.
What we will look for
Experience can be taught. Staying is the harder thing to recruit for.
In a house this small, each appointment is a large share of a child’s world — a reason to take longer and appoint fewer people.
Recruitment will follow safer recruitment principles and the Children’s Homes Regulations: identity, employment history, qualifications, references and an enhanced DBS check, all completed before somebody starts work.
People who want to stay
Somebody who would like to still be here in two years — not somebody filling a gap between jobs.
Curiosity before certainty
People who ask what a behaviour is communicating, rather than deciding in advance that they already know.
Attention to one child at a time
Knowing a particular child’s way of communicating, their sensory needs, their routines, and what a good day looks like for them.
Willingness to be supervised
We would far rather hear about a shift that went badly than read about it afterwards.
Supervision and development
A team that is looked after is a team that stays
Before anyone works alone
A structured induction — safeguarding, behaviour support, medication, record keeping, trauma-informed practice — ending in an assessment of competence, not just attendance.
Every month, at least
Formal supervision, plus group reflective practice facilitated by an external clinical supervisor — somebody from outside the home.
When something difficult happens
A debrief — designed into how the home will run, because the alternative is people carrying things on their own.
Over a career
Funded support for the Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, the Level 5 for those moving into management, annual appraisal, and specialist development in what this home will actually need.
Staff wellbeing is not a separate agenda: children who have experienced instability need adults who are not themselves running on empty.
Join the team
If you have read this far and recognised yourself
The team is being built now — the people who join early will help decide how this house feels.