The dyanmic nature of working in Blue Elephant Childcare

Working in Blue Elephant Head Office is always a bit of a roller coaster and information overload. We deal with the day-to-day running of the business, including sorting out wages, HR questions, recruiting and onboarding staff, and legislative requirements including Ofsted, DWP, HMRC, DVLA, etc., all while supporting our managers and staff.

We also spend a great deal of time researching and keeping on top of trends and patterns in the residential childcare market. We review 50-plus referrals each day from all over the South West and further away. We read Ofsted and DfE output, check CHA chat, and generally keep up with everything that is happening in the world of residential childcare.

We then take all that information and use it to make decisions about the direction of the company. This has led us to make some changes to our previously disclosed direction of travel expansion-wise.

The new Children's Wellbeing and Education Bill 2025 raised the concept of secure community-based children’s homes. We were a little ahead of the curve with one of our homes in Torrington, and it is clear that Ofsted inspectors have not yet read the new bill and don’t understand its impact. This has made us reconsider the Okehampton project, which would have been using this new model of care for complex kids, and for us to think again.

We have always had a really good relationship with Devon County Council and have built all our homes based on the stated needs of DCC. Somerset has occasionally used our services when DCC has not had any children to place, and they really admire our ethics and the company ethos, so much so that they have asked us many times to look at opening a home in Somerset.
Lately, they have spoken to us about the need for a home that will help transition children from children's residential facilities into foster homes, something we have done very successfully from a number of our homes.
We strategized about what this would look like and how to expand in that direction while still maintaining the Blue Elephant Village care model. Minehead was the obvious choice. Minehead is over the moor and is roughly 1 hour and 10 minutes from Head Office, a similar travel time as Okehampton. Our plan is to open our first home and then follow that with another couple of homes to create a cluster.

These homes will be a big part of Blue Elephant in the same way our current homes are; the staff will be trained at Head Office and will be an integrated part of the Blue Elephant Herd. Adverts are out for the manager and for the staff team!