To approve and endorse the Corporate Parenting strategy.

The cabinet member for young people and children’s wellbeing introduced the report and thanked officers for their hard work in putting the new corporate parenting strategy together. He noted that the strategy was the result of consultation with a wide range of partners and members and that the strategy had been the first item on the agenda of the new children and young people scrutiny committee. He reported that it had been a good meeting with two care leavers in attendance to give an account of their experiences.

The chairman of the corporate parenting panel had asked the cabinet member to pass on her view that the input of the panel and of foster carers had been really helpful in producing the draft strategy.

The cabinet member explained that the strategy set out how the council was going to put its Looked After Children (LAC) at the heart of all that it did. The priorities were straightforward and encapsulated why the council should give LAC the best start in life. He highlighted the foreword to the strategy, which noted that our society could not always predict the challenges that a child may face but how society reacted would be a key measure of how well it was functioning.

The cabinet member stated that one of the most important roles the council could play was to provide the best outcomes for vulnerable and disadvantaged children and there was no greater reward than achieving the best for our children who need our help.

The head of looked after children summarised the report. She noted that one of the challenges was in defining what corporate parenting meant. The strategy was intended to ensure that the quality of care and services that LAC received were of a standard that would be good enough if these were our own children.

The head of LAC noted that LAC and care leavers did not achieve as well as their peers in many situations and that they faced many inequalities. The council would seek to remove barriers and give LAC and care leavers opportunities.

The strategy was a refresh of the previous strategy and had been developed in consultation with the corporate parenting panel, officers, members, foster carers and young people themselves. The goal was to challenge the council in how it fulfilled its responsibilities as a corporate parent and to improve outcomes for children and young people. The strategy set out 7 priorities which led onto an action plan with specific areas to be changed, improved and developed. These were informed by the needs analysis which was attached as an appendix to the report.

The cabinet member for financial management and ICT asked how the council would go about reducing the number of LAC to a level below the national average.

The assistant director safeguarding and early help responded that the council had put a series of appropriate steps into place to seek to reduce the number of LAC to a figure more in line with statistical  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16