Agenda item

Purpose: This report proposes changes to the governance of the Corporate Parenting Panel to provide a robust framework that upholds the Council’s statutory responsibilities in relation carrying out its responsibilities towards children and young people in care including care leavers.

The Committee considered a report (Agenda Item 8) which proposed changes to the governance of the Corporate Parenting Panel to provide a robust framework that upheld the Council’s statutory responsibilities in relation to carrying out its responsibilities towards children and young people in care including care leavers.

Corporate Parenting was a statutory function of the Council. The leadership and commitment of Elected Members in their role as Corporate Parents was of critical importance in achieving good outcomes for children and young people in care. The Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Services undertaken in March 2015 provided an overall judgement that Children’s Services in West Berkshire were inadequate. The inspection concluded, amongst other things, that the characteristics of good leadership were not in place but that the local authority had recognised this and were taking action to address this.

One of the comments made by the Ofsted inspection team was that there was a need to “ensure that the Corporate Parenting Panel and children in Council care consistently contributed to improved outcomes for Looked After Children”.

A review of the current Corporate Parenting Panel arrangements had therefore taken place and this report recommended proposals for strengthening those arrangements to ensure robust challenge and improved outcomes for Looked After Children in the district.

The review had therefore looked at membership, objectives, scrutiny mechanisms that were in place, performance monitoring and reporting mechanisms in order to provide a robust governance structure for the future.

Councillor Graham Bridgman requested that the typographical errors be corrected before the report was considered at full Council:

·         in paragraph 3.3 use the correct from of ‘its’;

·         that paragraph 3.3 item 13 be amended to clarify its meaning by for example adding the words ‘by their attendance’ to the end of the sentence;

·         That paragraph 3.3 item 7 be re-written so that it made more sense by for example removing the first ‘the’ and inserting the word ‘and’ between ‘Council’ and ‘our’;

Councillor Bridgman commented that he felt that the whole of paragraph 3.3 should be looked at to ensure that it made more sense. He also stated that the membership section should be revisited. Paragraph 3.10 referred to 9 Members and it was not clear if these were District Councillors or not. Reference was made to 4 Members and 2 Substitutes and it was not clear if these were elected Members or not.

Councillor Lee Dillon asked what could be done to ensure that the views of the Council’s Looked After Children of all ages were heard. It was agreed that this would be a good question to raise at Council.

Councillor Rick Jones commented that it was not clear from the report what changes had been made. He therefore requested that the Council version of the report included a paragraph setting out the key changes and what impact these changes would have.

It was agreed that the report would be amended and sent to all Governance and Ethics Committee Members prior to inclusion in the Council agenda.

RESOLVED that the Governance and Ethics Committee recommend to Full Council that the governance of the Corporate Parenting Panel be amended to include new membership and Terms of Reference as set out in Appendix B to the report, subject to the inclusion of the amendments requested at this meeting.