Agenda item

With reference to article 9 of the minute of the meeting of the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee of 10 June, 2010, the Committee had before it a report by the Director of Social Care and Wellbeing, which set out the process to engage with services across the Council and key stakeholders of the Aberdeen City Integrated Children’s Services Partnership to develop the revised Corporate Parenting Policy which would then be submitted to the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee at its meeting on 27 January, 2011 for consideration.

The report provided a detailed background to the establishment of the initial Corporate Parenting Policy in 2007, as well as the requirement to refresh the existing policy.

The revised policy would set out the expectations for effective formal and informal local partnerships to ensure all elected members, local authority services, and associated agencies, were responsible for working together to ensure that the Council met the needs of its looked after children and young people for whom the Council had a duty of care and protection.

The report defined the meaning of Corporate Parenting and set out what being a good corporate parent entailed, namely:- accepting responsibility for children in the Council’s care; making their needs a priority, and seeking for them the same outcomes any good parent would want for their own children.  In addition, the responsibility and duty placed on the local authority in terms of corporate parenting were highlighted, as was the wider responsibility placed on the Council’s community planning partners to contribute towards improving the outcomes of looked after children. In particular the policy would specifically set out the roles and responsibilities of:- elected members, the Chief Executive of the Council, and the Council’s Corporate Governance, Social Care and Wellbeing and Environment Services. It would further set out the role of elected members and officers to work alongside the following stakeholders to ensure the outcomes were delivered:-

• Community Planning Partnerships including; the Police, Health Services
• Children’s Hearing System
• The Independent Sector

The revised policy would also seek to ensure that the Council currently understood how many children were looked after, the reasons for this and how well they were doing in all aspects of their life.  The areas which the policy would specifically set out roles and responsibilities for were outlined.  A number of case study examples highlighting how the various outcomes could be achieved were provided.

In terms of monitoring the policy, it was advised that the policy would be reviewed annually to ensure that the Council was progressing towards the vision to reach a position where there was no discernible difference between the education, health and employment and other life outcomes of looked after children and young people and care leavers and their peers. Members were reminded that in February, 2010, all relevant Committees of the Council, as well as The Aberdeen City Alliance had approved the governance arrangements for the planning and delivery of Integrated Children’s Services.  To ensure collective ownership to effectively delivery of the commitments to be set out in the policy, the lead officer would seek to engage with other Council services and key stakeholders of the Integrated Children’s Services Partnership in the development of the Corporate Parenting Policy.  Progress on the implementation would be reported to both the Council’s Corporate Policy and Performance Committee and the Integrated Children’s Services Partnership in due course.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         to note the process to develop the Policy within the Council’s wider services and with key stakeholders of the Integrated Children’s Services Partnership;

(ii)        to instruct officers to report back to the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee at its meeting on 27 January, 2011; and

(iii)       to request officers to develop a full programme of training for elected members on the policy from January 2011 and that the programme be circulated to members once finalised.