Corporate Parenting Strategy 2025 to 2030

It is critical for the success of the strategy that children and young people are being listened to and have their views taken into account in decision-making. We recognise that care experienced children and young people often don’t feel they have a say over decisions that affect them, and this has a significant impact on their wellbeing. Children and young people are experts in their own lives and should be key partners in anything that involves them.

Central to this will be ensuring the range of feedback we gather from our children, both formally and informally, is used to shape and influence service delivery across the council. It will be important for us to work closely with established groups including the We Do Care Council, Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO’s) and the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) to achieve this.

In Buckinghamshire, our work is focused on a trauma-informed and strengthening families approach which recognises the prevalence of trauma in people’s lives and acknowledges the potential effects this

can have on individuals and their families, networks, and communities. They are non-labelling, respectful and hopeful approaches that recognise people’s strengths and resilience and their potential for change.

These approaches require us to listen, understand and work together with children, young people, and their families. Building positive relationships and understanding and responding to individuals’ views and experiences is essential.

Our commitment to equality and inclusion includes ensuring that all children can participate fully in society, irrespective of their care experience, other characteristics and circumstances. We strive to eliminate barriers to inclusion, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to benefit from, contribute to and enjoy all that society

has to offer.

We will acknowledge and value our children’s differences, creating an environment where everyone feels welcome and heard. This will be influenced by Buckinghamshire’s Equality and Inclusion policy and the objectives to:

• develop, commission and deliver inclusive and responsive services.
• foster strong relationships within our communities so everyone feels safe, supported to live independently, and residents are encouraged to get involved in improving local services.
• develop and support a highly skilled workforce who are collaborative and ambitious in the work they do, whilst valuing diverse perspectives.
• ensure leadership and organisational commitment to equalities.

We aim to ensure that equality and diversity is included through all our work with children and young people. Care experienced children and young people experience discrimination in a variety of settings. They have experienced traumatic events that resulted in them becoming looked after, and as a result, they are more likely to suffer from a mental or physical health condition, more likely to be disadvantaged with learning resources and more likely to live in overcrowded households. National data also tells us that care leavers are overrepresented in custody. We will continue to help our children find stability, build trust with professionals and identify risks early to avoid young people entering the criminal justice system.

We recognise that our care experienced children and young people face the same challenges and difficulties as any other children and young people, but many of our care experienced children and young people have experienced trauma and may have additional vulnerabilities. We are committed to listening to them and taking all necessary steps to ensure that they are safeguarded.

We recognise that being care experienced can increase the potential for children and young people to go missing. Our Exploitation team works across all teams to improve practice and consistency of our response to children and young people who go missing and promote a growing awareness of contextual safeguarding risks for young people in care, including sexual and criminal exploitation.

When considering risks, we also recognise the need to target specific support to unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors, who may have been exploited on their journey to the UK and who are likely to have very limited local connections.

Our safeguarding approaches will need to be attentive to all these risks, and safeguarding will need to be considered at every level of the strategy to provide the safe environments our children and young people need.

We are also guided by Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children’s Partnership and the following principles as defined in the Children’s Social Care National Framework Children’s Social Care National Framework December 2023

• Multi-agency working is prioritised and effective.
• Leaders drive conditions for effective practice.
• The workforce is equipped and effective

We will work in a collaborative way, enabling our partners to engage in their corporate parenting responsibilities, recognising that it is only through working together that we will achieve the positive long term outcomes that our care experienced children and young people deserve. Key council services and partner agencies include: housing, schools, colleges and universities, employment, adult social care, public health, placements, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire (BOB) Integrated Care Board, other health services including CAMHS, and Thames Valley Police.

Care experienced children and young people tend to experience far more changes and transitions than the wider population of children. If not carefully planned and managed these changes can add to the trauma they have already experienced.

We are committed to ensure in every aspect of children and young people’s lives, changes and transitions are handled in a supportive

and sensitive way so that they can navigate them successfully.

Key changes for children where it will be important for us to work together with our partners include school transitions, moving homes, change in worker, turning 18, turning 25 and support moving from children’s social care to adult social care.