Conwy has a three year Corporate Parenting strategy to ensure that the whole Local Authority are engaged in their Corporate Parenting duty to Looked After Children. The strategy has five themes: Home, Education, Health, Leisure and Leaving care.
What’s changed?
The Strategy has been effective in delivering key pledges to Looked After Children by key officers taking accountability for delivering on the pledges. Some of the key achievements in the last year have been:
- All Fostering households and all children in Foster care has access to free leisure passes. All Care leavers also have the offer of the leisure pass this has recently been extended so they can also take a friend
- The Educational progress of Looked After Children is promoted through the ‘Virtual school’ panel
- The Corporate parenting panel has an overview of all our inspections focused on ‘’Looked After children’’ or the care provision provided to them
- The Corporate Parenting panel had commissioned the youth council and the Loud voices group which is a group of young people in care to develop two child friendly versions of the plan. So that Looked After Children can be clear what we are promising to deliver in pledges
- The Corporate Parenting panel has commissioned the officers to undertake a needs analysis of accommodation for Care leavers and consider future gaps
- The Corporate Parenting panel has been actively interested in how we promote Looked After Children’s physical and emotional health needs
- The Corporate Parenting panel has an active interest in the range of care option we deliver to Looked After Children
What difference has it made?
The Corporate Parenting work has been acknowledged in several of our CCSIW Inspections in the last 12 months such as ‘’Risky Behaviour Inspection and Fostering inspection’’ as an area of good practice. The Inspectors have been impressed by the participation element of Conwy’s Corporate parenting commitment. An example of this is some pictures below demonstrating the work that a group of young people in care developed a ‘’ Young person’s friendly version of the Corporate Parenting plan’’.