“Zoe consistently demonstrates a strong child-focused approach during her Regulation 44 visits. She takes the time to understand each child as an individual, listening to their views, experiences and wishes and ensuring their voice remains at the centre of our work.

She looks beyond the paperwork and focuses on how the care being provided is impacting children’s day-to-day lives. Her questions are thoughtful and meaningful, and she provides constructive feedback that helps the home continue to improve.

She is a real asset to the home and her child-focused approach, knowledge and professional challenge are greatly appreciated.”

Regulation 44

“I have had the pleasure of working with Annie as the Regulation 44 Independent Visitor for both of the children’s homes I manage. She is thorough, knowledgeable and consistently child-centred.

As a new Registered Manager, I have really valued Annie’s constructive challenge. She encourages myself and my team to consider different perspectives, reflect on our practice and make sure every ‘T’ is crossed and every ‘I’ is dotted.

Her own experience as a Registered Manager makes her particularly relatable, allowing her to provide practical and meaningful challenge while remaining objective and independent. I genuinely welcome her questions and feedback, as they are always respectful, supportive and focused on improving outcomes for children.”

Throughout our engagement, I have been consistently impressed by your extensive knowledge, professionalism and depth of experience within children’s residential care. Your understanding of regulatory requirements, best practice, leadership expectations, and service development has been invaluable in supporting our journey.

The advice and guidance has not only helped strengthen our operational foundations but have also supported the embedding of robust processes and procedures that are focused on delivering positive outcomes for both children and staff. I would also like to personally thank you for the support you have provided during challenging periods. Your responsiveness, honesty, and willingness to offer practical solutions have been greatly appreciated by both myself and the wider team.

In addition, your willingness to share your network of experienced professionals has been a significant benefit. The introductions and connections you have facilitated have provided access to expertise, resources and support that have added considerable value to the development of our service.

Sophie is always incredibly friendly, happy and approachable when visiting the home and she has a natural ability to make me and the staff team at The Pines feel relaxed and comfortable during her visits. She is extremely knowledgeable and supportive and it is clear that she takes the time to genuinely understand our home, our staff team, our practices and most importantly the needs of our young person.

The advice and guidance Sophie provides is always relevant, accurate and constructive and she encourages meaningful reflection around our practice rather than simply identifying areas for improvement. Sophie has personally supported me on several occasions, particularly around our most recent Ofsted inspection. Where her knowledge, reassurance and guidance were extremely valuable to me in my role as Registered Manager.

I always feel that I can approach Sophie for advice and that any guidance she provides is thoughtful and based on a good understanding of the home. Overall, I am genuinely very pleased that Sophie is our Regulation 44 Inspector. She brings a positive and supportive approach to independent monitoring while still providing appropriate professional challenge and I always look forward to her visits and continuing to work alongside her.

Annie is thorough with her inspections and helps guide the house on the right path.

Reports are very in-depth and recommendations are always practical.

The house was graded inadequate before me taking over as manager. Annie has helped shaped the way the home is moving forward

We were really impressed with the level of expertise and knowledge our auditor from Anchor showed. She quickly picked up on where our shortfalls were and calmly talked us through what needed strengthening and how to properly evidence the work we’d already done.

She kept us calm throughout, even when the pressure felt high, and that made a huge difference to our team. As a result, our compliance was lifted by Ofsted, and we now have a clean slate to build on.

It’s also changed how we work day to day – we’re much more consistent now with documenting and evidencing our practice. We can’t thank Anchor enough for holding our hand through the whole process.

Really happy with the reg 44, Annie is a breath of fresh air, reports are robust, all the managers enjoy her visits, gives very good advice and guidance – would like Annie to do more wilderness way homes in the next few months – happy to sign a 12 month SLA 

Always honest and thorough 

use relevant feedback and advice to inform and improve practice and operational management of the home

Very welcoming and experienced offers a lot of good sound advice to me as a manager and also the staff team here at the home.
Yes, it supports the home to acknowledge where they are at and how they develop moving forward

Very thorough and reflective of the service; the advice was valuable and professional.

I am very satisfied with the Regulation 44 visit conducted by Amy the Independent Visitor. She is friendly, approachable, and took the time to listen carefully to my views and experiences. I felt comfortable speaking openly and felt that my opinions were valued and respected.

Amy consistently demonstrated a high level of professionalism throughout her visits. Her communication was clear, respectful, and approachable, making it easy to discuss both strengths and areas for development within the service

The Reg 44/25 report met my expectations and provided a clear, balanced, and accurate overview of the service.
I feel the visit added value to the service and supported improvement. Amy offered sound knowledge and helpful advice on ways to improve the service. Her feedback was constructive and gave both myself and the team useful ideas to enhance the support we provide to the young people. The visit encouraged reflection on current practice and highlighted opportunities for continuous improvement, helping us to deliver the best possible outcomes for the young people in our care.

Elaine is lovely, very personable, knowledgeable and supportive.
Elaine always offers advice and guidance in a supportive and constructive manner.

She has a lovely way with the children in the home and with the team.

Her knowledge and guidance are invaluable, and her visits are always a pleasure

Feedback on a MOCK visit Gareth completed in March 2026

He was brilliant, amazing, he did a teams meeting to establish what the home wanted, and what the company wanted from the 1 day and asked for documents beforehand so was very good, he then planned the visit, they were able to ask questions and run ideas and this has been the most valuable part of the service so far – Gareth looked at where they were, and where they are now, and to have Elaine and Gareth come in with solid Ofsted experience elements is very good and they want to work towards outstanding

Gareth talked about where Ofsted may focus, which made a huge difference and restructured them as a team

Elaine consistently provides fair and proportionate feedback, with clear areas of how our home can develop and improve in practice. 

Great service – very happy

As a relatively new manager, Anchor has helped me to build my self-confidence by encouraging me to understand that I am on the right track with the work being done in the home. The advise they have given me has helped to improve the service further

Amanda gives constructive feedback and advice which has contributed to us being able to move forward from where we were to where we are now. All recommendations a fair and discussed before written in the report.

The reports give us chance to reflect on the month, highlighting areas of good practice but also areas where we need to develop – this helps us improve as a home each month.

Our visitor consistently demonstrates a high level of professionalism throughout her visits. Her communication is clear, respectful, and approachable, making it easy to discuss both strengths and areas for development within the service

I have used two reg 44 visitors from Anchor and they cannot be compared to previous visitors. Their support, knowledge, understanding and own experience of the registered managers role has a huge difference.

Really happy with Amy and like her approach and reports. Really positive feedback, and we really like the service from Anchor.