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APPENDIX B
Your role as a Corporate Parent (guidance)
Corporate parenting means the formal and local partnerships needed between all local authority departments and services, and associated agencies, who are responsible for working together to meet the needs of looked after children and young people, and care leavers. ( Looked After Children and Young People: We Can and Must Do Better, Scottish Executive, 2007)
You can find out more in These Are Our Bairns: A guide for community planning partnerships on being a good corporate parent (Scottish Government, 2008).
Corporate parenting is not only a responsibility but a real opportunity to improve the futures of looked after children and young people; recognising that all parts of the system have a contribution to make is critical to success. Being a good corporate parent means we should:
- accept responsibility for the council's looked after children and young people;
- make their needs a priority; and
- seek for them the same outcomes any good parent would want for their own children.
Good parents make sure their children are well looked after, making progress at school, healthy, have clear boundaries for their own and others' safety and wellbeing and are enjoying activities and interests. As they grow older, they encourage them to become independent, and support them if they need it, to become part of the local community and access further or higher education, training or work. Corporate parents must do the same, albeit that many more individual people will be involved in the corporate family than some ordinary families.
Whether you are a teacher, a residential care worker, or work in any other capacity with looked after children and young people or care leavers, you are part of the corporate family and have an additional responsibility to those children who are in the care of your local authority. It is therefore your job to ask yourself "is this good enough for my child?" and do everything you can to make sure the answer is "yes".
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