Corporate Parents are public bodies with legal duties and responsibilities towards care experienced children and young people. Part 9 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, 2014 relates to Corporate Parenting. This applies to every child who is looked after by a local authority, and every young person under the age of 26, who was looked after on their 16th birthday.

Our organisation is one of a list of 24 corporate parents mentioned in the Act. 

​​​​​​​A person is care experienced if they have ever been looked after by a local authority; whether that be in foster care, kinship care, residential care, secure care, or if they have been subject to compulsory measures of supervision at home.  Children and young people who are care experienced have among the poorest outcomes of all children and young people in Scotland. It is our job as corporate parents to try and improve this. 

In 2020, we took the decision to refer to care experienced young people as “our children and young people”. This reflects our values, responsibilities and commitments as corporate parents.

As a corporate parent, we expect to carry out many of the roles any parent should. We have a duty to work with other corporate parents, to best meet our shared responsibilities, promote the wellbeing of our children and young people and keep them safe from harm.

Our Corporate Parenting Report (2017-2020)

Our corporate parenting group has made some significant achievements during the three-year cycle of our plan, which are discussed in our corporate parenting report (2017-2020). We also have a version of our corporate parenting report for children and young people.

Some of our key achievements and improvement include:

  • The development of a complaints text service for children and young people and improved materials to inform children and young people on how they can make a complaint.
  • Personal care planning guidance: our children and young people have personal plans. These give guidance to care services on how to meet their needs, wishes and choices. We met 120 of our children and young people to help them develop these to a high standard.
  • Our young inspection volunteers support a range of our inspection activities. This short video provides a little insight into how they help us  engage with children and young people meaningfully. 
  • We have worked with Who Cares? Scotland and our young inspection volunteers to develop and deliver training for all board members, executive group members and senior managers.

Our Corporate Parenting Plan (2021-2023)

Our Corporate Parenting Plan (2021-2023) has six high level commitments with four areas of focus and a set of detailed actions. We have also developed a version of our Corporate Parenting Plan for Children and Young People.

We pledge to listen to our children and young people, take action and do our best to improve their life chances. These are our six commitments. The action plan in our Corporate Parenting Plan (2021-2023) shows in detail how we will meet them:

  • We will strive to meet the needs of our young people and promote their rights.
  • We will listen to our young people and we will learn how their experiences of the ‘care system’ can best shape our approach to scrutiny, engagement and improvement to help improve the lives of others.
  • We will continue to inspect different services and partnerships and report on how well they work together. We will help services share what works well and learn from what needs to improve, to help make sure that our young people get the right support at the right time.
  • When one of our young people makes a complaint about the care they receive, we will take that complaint seriously and we will respond in a timely, thorough and proportionate way. We will always provide feedback to the person who made the complaint in a way that they will understand.
  • We will improve opportunities for our young people to develop skills, experience, and confidence to achieve their personal, employment and career ambitions.
  • We will work with other corporate parents to make sure that together we can do our best for our young people.