Effective corporate parenting
Member training to champion outcomes for looked-after children
Why is this important?
Councillors have a legal duty, as corporate parents, to ensure ‘looked-after’ children within their authority are healthy and thriving. Yet many elected members are unsure about how these responsibilities should work in practice or what an authority needs to do to achieve positive outcomes. Understanding the complexities of this important governance duty is essential training for all scrutiny members as well as councillors involved in areas of education, child protection/safeguarding and health and wellbeing.
Our offer
This one day training course, based on the CfGS/LGA research report 10 Questions to ask if you’re scrutinising services for Looked-After Children, provides council members and staff with the skills, knowledge and structures to scrutinise current arrangements in their local authority to support children who face these challenging circumstances.
The training covers the following areas:
- Exploring the role and function of the corporate parent for councillors.
- Reviewing current structures and processes to support the corporate parenting function including Corporate Parenting Boards, Children in Care Councils, the Pledge and overview and scrutiny.
- Identifying the range of diverse needs and experiences of local children and young people for whom the corporate parent role is designed.
- Considering ways to embed the voice of looked-after children and young people and establish a child-centered approach to corporate parenting.
- Identifying key challenge questions to ask about the different aspects of looked-after children’s wellbeing.
- Exploring examples of good practice for corporate parenting and indicators of an effective local approach including approaches to monitoring outcomes for local children.
- Considering some key scrutiny questions about wider services for looked-after children.
- Identifying barriers to effective corporate parenting and ways to overcome these.
- Formulating personal action plans that include practical next steps.
About the Author: Su Turner
CfGS has a wealth of experience in supporting the governance and scrutiny of safeguarding, children’s services and education, for more information please contact us by emailing: info@cfgs.org.uk. This page was originally authored by Su Turner, formerly Director of Children and Young People, who left CfGS in April 2017.
