Customer Spotlight: Horizon Care and Education Group
Horizon Care and Education Group provides children’s homes, specialist education and supported accommodation across England, with the aim of supporting young people to flourish and thrive regardless of the challenges they have faced.
Since operations began in 2007, Horizon has grown to a team of more than 1,000 colleagues who work to offer the best services and support for children and young people within their care. Horizon supports more than 800 children and young people throughout their different settings – each carefully designed with a therapeutic approach to support the delivery of high-quality care, support, and education.
Horizon Care and Education Group: Supporting Young Lives
We recently had the joy of touring one of the latest homes in Wiltshire, created through a partnership between Horizon and Wiltshire County Council. This project aims to bring children back to Wiltshire, closer to their families, and help them thrive in their own community.
“We are honoured to partner with Wiltshire Council on this vital initiative. At Horizon, we believe every young person deserves a stable, nurturing environment where they can grow and thrive. Our new home is warm, comfortable, and inviting, providing children with the solid foundation they need to build brighter futures.” Amanda Cunningham, CEO of Horizon
"When we introduced Radar Healthcare, our goal was to eliminate paper use entirely. We wanted a reliable, robust system that could provide us with all the necessary details. Currently, we've implemented the events module, covering incidents and accidents, audits and we're in the process of adding more. We've also started using tagging, which aids in our service improvement plans within homes and supported accommodations. This approach simplifies everything.
It makes our work much easier enabling us to operate remotely and still gather essential information. In case of inspections, if the manager is absent due to illness or holiday, other team members can access the required data. If there's a significant incident and Ofsted requests information, we can convert it to PDF, redact it, and email it directly to the relevant party, whether it's a commissioner or a key stakeholder. Everything is stored in one central location, so nothing gets lost.”
The right information, at the right time to the right place and person
Integrating Radar Healthcare into Horizon offers the whole team clear visibility and control. This allows them to make informed decisions using an assurance map, gathering ample data to both celebrate their strengths and identify areas for quality improvement. One of the biggest achievements of using Radar Healthcare is that the right information now reaches the right person exactly when they need it.
“When we’re looking at risk management and good governance. It gives us the information that we need at the right time. Everybody has access from the front-line staff all the way up to the regional operations manager that’s reviewing that incident.” – Donna Geraghty, Interim Managing Director of Supported Accommodation
As Donna explains the new process within Radar Healthcare has saved a significant amount of time for multiple stakeholders due to having increased oversight through the platform.
“One of the successes we’ve seen with Radar Healthcare is in managing significant incidents. Before Radar Healthcare, we relied on individuals to contact others through phone or email when a significant event occurred.
A real success is that we’ve reduced these calls because we now get live information through Radar Healthcare. This allows us to see events as they happen. Consequently, we can confirm oversight, ensure everything is managed locally within the home, and only conduct a significant event call if additional support is needed. The number of significant event calls has decreased since implementing the system, saving valuable time and resources.” – Donna Geraghty, Interim Managing Director of Supported Accommodation
Regulatory Inspections: Streamlined and Efficient
Radar Healthcare has given the Horizon team clear insights into specific areas.
As Oliver explains: “Our focus is on ensuring young people move into the right home at the right time with the appropriate support. We usually expect a spike in incidents at the beginning, followed by a cooling period, all of which is readily available to those who need it. I have demonstrated this to Ofsted not just with numbers, but with charts and data that visually show trends over time. This information is essential, and we can now provide it daily or when Ofsted visits our services.
Within any children’s residential services if a child goes missing, you must report their return and complete a return home interview or determine if it has been notified to the police under Regulation 40. If this were to happen at Horizon, we have workflow triggers to identify and report missing incidents efficiently. The workflow lets me ensure, from a regulatory perspective, that all necessary steps are being followed. I can see a missing report, check if it was submitted, and ensure the right notifications were made. Being able to do this quickly has been invaluable.
At Horizon, we have expanded this further. Although not required by regulation, we include a caveat for the responsible individual, meaning the operations manager signs off every incident report. Previously, I had to physically sign records, but now I can do this electronically. This system ensures compliance with Ofsted regulations, showing I have oversight and am satisfied that all areas are being met.”
Radar Healthcare has not only helped with visibility and oversight at Horizon in terms of regulatory compliance but has also streamlined the time it takes to pull reports, specifically the Regulation 45 report submitted to Ofsted. Donna explains that feedback from Ofsted has been very positive.
“In the last few inspections, we’ve received excellent feedback from Ofsted regarding our incident management system, our analytics, and our Regional Operations Managers. We can now oversee everything in one place, including audits on learning development, leadership within the home, and feedback from young people and colleagues, all aligned with regulation and our quality standards. This allows us to identify areas of poor practice and shortfalls proactively, ensuring we address these before a regulator does. Once an audit is completed, we can implement measures to mitigate against an adverse inspection.”
Standardising quality across a large organisation
Within any large organisation, standardising quality and assurances is a challenge. At Horizon, locations are divided by region, and each manager brings great ideas to implement in their homes. Now, through Radar Healthcare, these ideas can be shared to improve the quality not only for the children within a specific home but for all children across the services. Recording successes and understanding why they work so they can be applied elsewhere is crucial for improving quality.
Donna explains: “we are currently working on standardising our systems across all homes to ensure everyone has access to the right tools. As new children arrive with unique needs, we may need to adapt and add new components to our system. Fortunately, our quality assurance framework allows us to identify areas for improvement while expanding on successful practices. With the data we now have, we can easily demonstrate the system’s benefits to managers. Previously, there was some hesitation due to a lack of data, but now that all services are on board, we can effectively analyse and utilise the information.”
Utilising the data from Radar Healthcare has enabled the team to recognise their successes and review their policies and procedures. In health and social care, blame often falls on the person who made a mistake. However, as Horizon moves forward, the focus shifts to whether individuals were provided with the right information, training, and learning opportunities. Donna says: “If we don’t have the right policies in place, we’ll develop them.”
She continues: “Radar Healthcare has allowed us to turn the focus inward, examining the quality team, operations managers, and training. We assess whether every individual has the necessary skills and quality levels. This approach is the best way to ensure the quality of care provided to the children is the best it can be. The more access and visibility I have to information, the more support I can provide from anywhere in the country, which has been significant in developing the quality of our services.”
“I would encourage any children's home provider to take up such a platform that allows you to remotely analyse your information, especially in operations or in a registered manager's role, from wherever you are, to ensure the quality of care that's been provided to the children in your services.”
Time for support
Radar Healthcare has helped Horizon save time, notably through remote access to incidents.
As Oliver explains: “previously, we used to visit the homes, and part of the audit system involved reviewing all incidents from one month to the next, which in some services would take a full day. But now, with Radar Healthcare, I can do that remotely over the course of the month. This change allows me to focus on the quality of care, support plans, activities, and manager development and coaching, areas I couldn’t previously prioritise because I was tied up with incident reviews.
By handling incidents remotely, I can support managers better during visits, giving them the right assistance they need. This approach frees up time for other essential tasks like development and support. When managers receive more support and development, they are happier in their roles, leading to better staff retention. It’s like a positive snowball effect.”
As with all our partners at Radar Healthcare, we collaborate to adapt, change, and consistently monitor how we work together.
As Oliver puts it: “in children’s services, everyone prefers things to be black and white. We discuss risk assessments, behaviour support plans, and protocols for various scenarios. However, we’re dealing with children—human beings—so you can’t script everything precisely. Just as a child’s behaviour can change, so can a system. But if you adapt, you’ll achieve the desired outcomes in the long run.”
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