Child taken to wrong address miles away as Ofsted finds ‘serious’ failures at Nugent home

A child living in a Merseyside care home who had gone missing was left waiting for over an hour for a taxi to take them back home.

When the taxi, sent by staff at the home run by Nugent Care, did arrive, it took the child to the wrong address miles away. The child eventually got in touch with a family member, who found them and brought them back.

This was just one of the concerning incidents inspectors described after visiting the home, whose address has not been made public but the Monitor understands is in the Merseyside area.

Ofsted, which visited the home in August, found ‘serious and widespread’ failures, including around the care and safeguarding of children at the home. When inspectors visited just a year earlier, in July 2025, the home had been rated as ‘Good.‘

The home, which had spaces for up to three children but only had one living there by the time of the inspection, had been operated by Nugent Care 2019. Inspectors visited after concerns and allegations were raised about the home.

Nugent has now confirmed to the Monitor the home is no longer running and the remaining child has been moved to another setting they run.

Basic systems around safeguarding, staffing and management had badly broken down at the home, with children frequently being cared for by adults they didn’t know and agency workers being expected at times to work alone without a proper induction or even enough information about the children they were looking after.

In one case, an agency worker was left alone with a child who had arrived for their first night in the home, despite staff having little notice they were coming or having been provided with enough information about how to care for them safely. One child told inspectors that being looked after by so many different people had been a ‘confusing’ experience.

Inspectors also found internal doors to communal areas of the home were being locked, restricting the children’s access around their home. This was not a new issue either as it had been raised at the last inspection in July, when Ofsted said the locks ‘detract from the homely environment’ staff were trying to create.

Serious weaknesses were identified in terms of what was done when children went missing, including a lack of clear protocols about where staff should search or what welfare checks should be carried out when children were out and about, with inspectors finding some checks were just not taking place at all. Inspectors also found problems with medication records and labelling.

The management at the home also came under heavy criticism from Ofsted. One of the issues raised was that there hadn’t been a registered manager in place for months and, although a new manager had been appointed by the time of the inspection, they hadn’t actually applied to register with Ofsted yet and were only attending the home once a week while working elsewhere for Nugent the rest of the time.

Ofsted said this had ‘significantly compromised’ oversight of the home. The young person living there told inspectors the manager was ‘rarely here’ and they didn’t know who Nugent’s responsible individual was, only meeting them for the first time during the Ofsted inspection.

Inspectors also said they couldn’t be assured from looking at staff records who had actually been working in the home at particular times. Not all staff were up to date with mandatory training and it wasn’t clear to inspectors whether agency workers deployed to look after the vulnerable children at the home had completed the required training either, with temporary staff also not receiving regular management supervision.

Three young people had moved from the home to adult placements since the previous Ofsted visit and inspectors said they found they hadn’t all been properly prepared for those significant moves.

A Nugent Care spokesperson told the Monitor it ‘accepted the findings and recognised the seriousness of the failures’. A spokesperson said: ‘The care described in the report fell below the standards children and families should expect from Nugent.’

‘We took immediate action following the inspection,’ the spokesperson continued, ‘and have ceased operations at the home.’

‘Arrangements were made to ensure the young person living there continued to receive appropriate care and support in an alternative Nugent setting,’ the spokesperson added.

Nugent didn’t directly respond by time of publication to a number of questions put to it by the Monitor about how the failures had been allowed to develop, including why the home had been allowed to continue operating without a registered manager, what action had been taken over the missing child incident and what changes had been made in response to concerns about agency staff.

A Nugent spokesperson said its other children’s homes were rated Good by Ofsted and that it was reviewing arrangements across its services in light of the report, with the work having the ‘full attention’ of its leadership.

You can read the full report, which was published last week, here.

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