Councillors and committees

Agenda item

CORPORATE PARENTING STRATEGY

Purpose of report: to review and agree the Corporate Parenting Strategy which will be published and become a Council wide document

 

 

Minutes:

Witnesses:

 

Mary Lewis, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families

 

Davie Hill, Executive Director Children, Families, Culture and Lifelong Learning

Tina Benjamin, Director – Corporate Parenting

Simon Hart, Independent Chair of Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership

 

1.    The Chairman invited the Director – Corporate Parenting to introduce the Corporate Parenting Strategy document. The Director informed the Committee that the principles established in the 2017 Children Social Work Bill were at the heart of the Corporate Parenting Strategy. The thinking around this strategy was to bring together the expectations of the Local Authority to make explicit what the duties were and how governance would be managed and monitored. A report would be established to inform council on the annual performance and outcomes for LAC within one document. The Director – Corporate Parenting asked that the Committee to endorse the document and comment on how it had been presented.

 

2.    A Member asked how the strategy had been developed with partners. The Director informed the Committee that there was more that could be done to work with partners albeit they were extending their roles with partners on delivery. 

 

3.    The Vice Chairman applauded the strategy for being ambitious and compassionate though he acknowledged existing challenges, the biggest of which seemed to be around leaving care. The Committee suggested adopting a more strategic approach and stepping up work on duties to care leavers, apprenticeships, and supporting care leavers with student loans. The Vice Chairman asked whether there were opportunities for them to consider, with partners and the chamber of commerce, assisting care leavers with scholarship applications, and generally encouraging young people in care to pursue higher education.

 

4.    The Cabinet Member stated that the Corporate Parenting Board had made significant improvement following a restructure that slimmed down the membership of the board The most recent report from the Children’s Commissioner stated that the ‘corporate parenting was developing well’. The Cabinet Member stated the importance of partners working alongside the board in all aspects of corporate parenting. They believed that the strategy did express the desire of the corporate parenting board to give children healthy lives. They suggested that something could be added to the strategy on how to bring partners in more closely to the corporate parenting work.

 

5.    A Member stated that foster parents should be recognised as partners as they are key in looking after Surrey’s children on behalf of corporate parents. The Cabinet Member informed the Committee that there was foster carer representation on the Corporate Parenting Board. Nevertheless, the Cabinet Member stated that they were happy to look at the wording of the relevant part of the report to see how it could perhaps be strengthened to greater reflect the importance of foster carers, and the partnership aspect. The Cabinet Member also stated that under levels of corporate parenting responsibility an additional bullet point could be added to summarise that the chair/ members of the corporate parenting board would take a lead role in promoting awareness of applying the corporate parenting principles for looked after children and care leavers in Surrey.  

 

6.    Members referred to the leaving care section and the need for support from personal advisors. The Director – Corporate Parenting stated that although there were individual pathway plans for all young people, there were real challenges for care leavers in terms of managing finances and that there was more work that could be done in relation to this.

 

7.    The Independent Chair of Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership stated that there was potential to work with and encourage partnership work with children leaving care and offered to bring the Corporate Parenting Strategy to the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership. The Chair emphasised the importance of demonstrating that the corporate parenting strategy was influencing other organisations to work differently.

 

8.     A Member stated that it was important to clearly define how the council aimed to deliver its priorities and asked how this could be achieved. The Director stated that each individual child had a review and an independent reviewing officer. They stated that there were a number of ways that their views could be heard and opportunity to escalate issues if the independent reviewing officer believed the service to be failing in its duties. The Director – Corporate Parenting stated that Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were also used to inform what the outcomes were, and to compare Surrey’s performance against other local authorities.

 

 

RESOLVED:

i.         The Select Committee endorses the corporate parenting strategy.

ii.       Recommended that the Select Committee reviews progress against aspirations in the strategy via an annual report in January and take evidence from partners.

iii.      Recommended that the Select Committee use the corporate parenting principles to inform its scrutiny of the council’s services for children who are looked after.

 

 

ACTIONS

1.    For the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families to consider the addition of the following: ‘the chair/ members of the corporate parenting board would take a lead role in promoting awareness of the way of applying the corporate parenting principles for looked after children and care leavers, among the elected members in surrey more widely’ to the document

2.    For the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families and officers to review how the partnership aspect of the strategy could be strengthened in the future

3.    For the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families to insert additional words to further emphasise how integral foster parents are to the corporate parenting board and more widely in looking after children

 

Supporting documents: