Agenda item

Andreas Feldhaar, Jane Hylton, Ralph Rushworth, Permanence Service, LCC

To review the Lancashire Corporate Parenting Strategy 2022-2026 and the draft Lancashire Promise, and to note the objectives outlined.

Andreas Feldhaar, Permanence Service, Lancashire County Council presented the Corporate Parenting Strategy 2022-2026, Draft Promise and Objectives and reiterated the importance of the role of a Corporate Parent.

The Board were asked to work in groups to discuss what they thought a good Corporate Parent should be and the characteristics they felt were really important to have.  The Board were reminded of the Corporate Parenting Principles which is legislation and states what is important when acting as a Corporate Parent (details of the principles, can be found documented in the presentation attached).  Following the discussion, feedback was given from each of the groups and a copy of the responses is provided in the minutes.  A summary of some of the responses were:

·  Support, think and plan for our young people

·  Children are the centre of thinking

·  Caring

·  Physical, emotional and wellbeing

·  Aspirations for our young people

·  Thoughtful

·  Engaging

·  Holistic understanding of care experienced young people

·  Life skills

·  Helping young people on the journey, when moving into independence

The Corporate Parenting Principles apply to Corporate Parents and are a statutory duty that have to be fulfilled.  The Corporate Parenting role applies to any employee of Lancashire County Council including Elected Members and the principles are non-negotiable if you are in that role and does not matter whether you work directly with care experienced young people or not.  The legislation also identifies relevant partners ie health, education, police and criminal justice.  The principles do not apply to those relevant partners as a statutory duty, however relevant partners should be open to those principles and Corporate Parents, should encourage them to follow the principles.  It is also the responsibility of a Corporate Parent to encourage services and businesses in the community, to commit to those principles and apply them in their actions, to enable a growing corporate family for young people.

The Board carried out another exercise to review the revised Corporate Parenting Promise that had been originally created with young people in 2018.  The promise was built on the Corporate Parenting Principles and what it means to Board members and ensure, that in their role, colleagues' roles within their services, can commit and keep to the promise.  It was noted that this would be followed up in the coming weeks. Feedback from the groups on their promise to young people, were shared with Board members and a copy of the comments are attached to the minutes.

The current Corporate Parenting Strategy runs from 2018-2022 and has been in the process of being reviewed since June 2021.  The Board were presented with the draft amendments that had been made to that strategy and these had been circulated with the agenda.  The eight new objectives reflected the four Corporate Parenting priorities, and the Board were asked to review the proposed objectives to ensure they reflected the four priorities and that they were the right objectives for the Board for the next four years.  It was noted that the young people had also reviewed the strategy and provided their feedback too.

A query was raised as to how the objectives would be measured and how often this would be done.  It was noted that there was a series of briefings taking place currently with the Chair and Deputy Chair of the Corporate Parenting Board with all Heads of Service across Children's Social Care.  There would also be a Head of Service presenting their area of work to the Board at each meeting as well as the Performance Data report for Children's Services.  This will enable the Board to scrutinise and monitor the data as well as the individual Priority Groups who will also be presented with data pertinent to the priority they are leading on. 

Resolved:  That the Draft Promise and objectives for the Corporate Parenting Strategy 2022-2026 be agreed.