Our Story
Our staff members are committed to giving children an opportunity to develop in their journey to independence.
Our journey that led us to do so started in 2012, when the vision of helping children was put into action by setting up a Mixed Martial Arts non-profit charity and providing classes with affordable fees for all. We now offer two classes a week for two age groups.
The Directors of 5ab Care have always promoted exercise, healthy eating and training and at the Mixed Martial Arts classes, we saw a lot of children joining and their confidence growing over time, this was very rewarding and pushed us to work towards being able to support children as a career.
Where it started
In 2016 we looked into children's residential homes, as it was now time to "step up" and help children on a larger scale.
After copious amounts of research and understanding of the industry. The foundations were set and 5ab Care was then incorporated in January 2018.
5ab Care then set up the first home named The Haven in Derby, an independent children’s residential home for children with Emotional Behavioural Disorders (EBD).
Our company has been growing organically and we were able to subsequently open two more homes.
Belle River House, in Burton on Trent, which is another home for children with EBD; and River Lea House, in Luton, for children with Learning Difficulties (LD).
What we offer
In all our residential homes we ensure children’s needs are met and we do so by offering 24 hours care, having a therapeutic approach, providing education and getting children in mainstream education. If this is not possible specialist schools are considered.
The aim is providing our children and young people with opportunities to become independent individuals who make a positive contribution to the community. We prepare them for when they come out from their teen years and become adults.
Here at 5ab Care we want to ensure that we are preparing the young people in our care for life as young adults. We provide them with the requisite skills for independent living and we do so by helping them master different types of skills, which can go from cooking, managing their own money, finding a part-time job; to learning to live within a community made up of different people and knowing the risks associated with certain behaviours.
Another important goal
We are here to make this process smooth and to guarantee they are in a safe environment with all the support they require before coming into a care home, it is normal for children to feel stressed and anxious about the change, but we are here to make sure this is a positive experience for our young people.
Young people can often feel alone but we always strive to have a therapeutic approach to their care. We have a dedicated Therapist who, through one-to-one weekly sessions, helps each individual child to manage their emotions. Our therapist also meets monthly with our teams to help guide them in dealing with behaviours and understanding each young person’s differences.
Our aims
Another important goal here at 5ab Care is to help care home residents make plans for their future and work with them towards their chosen career path, this could be for example by helping them with college or job applications.
In fact, support from children’s home staff is usually the biggest help with their education and career choices. All the work we do helps to build confidence in young people in our care and push them to cultivate only the right relationships.
5ab Care want to give children something they didn’t have before, which is a chance, and really make that journey into adulthood as smooth as possible.
How do we achieve this?
All our achievements are down to our staff team and that’s where we invest in. We ensure they receive all the training necessary to provide the best care and make sure our staff can help provide children with the opportunities they need to thrive.
All staff members go through an enhanced DBS check and a rigorous recruitment process to ensure all members are a perfect fit for 5ab Care.
They will undergo different types of training, these include mandatory training, which is the training they require following statutory regulations, local authority requirements and requirements specified by Ofsted.
Training provided
Physical intervention training to equip themselves with a range of techniques to apply only when absolutely necessary, and they will also gain self harm training and safeguarding training. This is to ensure they are prepared for any possible behaviours.
To improve their work and overcome obstacles, every month staff members have consultations with our therapist. This enables them to discuss their work-related struggles and positive learnings in order for the therapist to help provide alternative strategies and understand underlying issues of behaviours.
Training provided (cont...)
The quality of coaching through staff, mentoring and guidance from senior management is where the success comes from.
We value the quality of time spent with children, and to ensure they have plenty available we have invested in an online system to keep track of all children’s logs rather than a paper based system.
To provide quality care to our children, we also have healthy budgets set up, these will help ensure children have a good experience with us and can include for example birthday allowances, Christmas allowances, money for leisure activities and food budgets.
Comments or feedback
"We have actually done the support worker role ourselves, how can we direct the organisation if we don’t know what it is like to work hands on with the children” says one of the Directors
“That was probably the best part, you can better understand the children, get to know the staff needs and you get to interact. We cared for a young person with whom we had deep conversations that we had never even had with adults” he added.