Corporate Parenting Strategy 2025 to 2030

Buckinghamshire Council works hard to ensure the right support is provided at the right time so that children can remain in the care of their families. However where it isn’t safe for them to remain at home, appropriate action is taken to protect them.

For our care experienced children and young people to thrive they need to feel secure and to have a strong sense of belonging in their homes and in the community. To facilitate that effectively we need access to a range of high-quality foster homes and housing arrangements that are well-matched to their needs and backgrounds. We want our children, wherever possible, to stay in Buckinghamshire where they are close to places and people that are important to them such as friends, schools and community groups.

We want to reduce the number of children living outside of Buckinghamshire and help keep them in their own communities.

It is recognised that moving children and young people from their homes or having to change placements is difficult, so it is important we work hard to find suitable placements for our children and young people that will allow them to build positive relationships and flourish. We will provide our carers with the tools and support they need to be the best carers to our children and young people.

We have a duty to ensure our children and young people have a safe place to stay, a commitment which is also set out in our Sufficiency Strategy and Joint housing protocol.

• Ensure all relevant housing and planning strategies and our Sufficiency Strategy have a focus on increasing availability of foster carers in Buckinghamshire such as planning processes, help to buy schemes, property programmes and improvement programmes.
• Continue to strengthen family-finding to give children the best chance of being able to live with extended family or friends who are familiar to them.
• Continue to provide a support package for kinship carers so that wherever possible, children and young people can remain with their wider families.
• Work closely with our placements team and commissioning to ensure we have placements that can meet our children and young people’s needs.
• Provide children and young people with a safe home to live, with carers who are suitable and well trained.
• Build on the training offer to include therapeutic and trauma informed parenting ensuring we are upskilling our carers to meet the needs of our children in their care and improve outcomes.
• Build on the Mockingbird approach which supports foster carers through bringing together clusters of ‘satellite homes’ to form a ‘constellation’, akin to a support network of extended family and based on the idea of “it takes a whole village to raise a child”.
• Encourage foster carers to utilise the weekly consultations with CAMHS for supportive and solution focused consultations aimed to reduce the risk of escalating concerns.
• Continue to promote Staying Put arrangements for young people to remain with their foster carers beyond 18.
• Ensure children and young people will only be moved if there is no alternative outcome.
• Enable meaningful relationships between children and people they love to be a priority and encourage this to be acknowledged by key partners.
• Continue the development of our own children’s homes promoting an increased resource for children and young people to be placed locally near their family, friends and communities.
• Children and young people will only be placed in unregistered placements in exceptional circumstances. Where this happens, we will ensure they are within Buckinghamshire and regularly reviewed to ensure children and young people are safe and that their needs are being met appropriately.
• Continue to review whether it is possible for children and young people to return home or to their wider family as circumstances for them change through Children Looked After Reviews and Permanency Panel.
• Continue to make good in-house adoption placements which link the adopters into our support services and enables them to approach the Council for advice and support at any time.
• Aim for all care experienced young people to have access to safe, suitable and affordable housing and for them to be fully supported when they first set up a tenancy to prevent housing difficulties, debt or homelessness.

• Percentage of care experienced children living outside of Buckinghamshire reduces.
• Increase in the number of available foster carers.
• Percentage of children placed with foster carers to increase.
• Percentage of care experienced children placed within our own foster homes and children’s homes to increase.
• Increased rates of children staying with their carers beyond 18.
• Timeliness for children being placed for adoption measured in key performance indicators and reviewed at the Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) Board.