Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will review the way in which local authorities carry out their responsibilities for corporate parenting and take any steps needed to ensure that training for councillors involved in that role is both adequate and up-to-date.

We expect all local authorities to be good corporate parents to the children in their care. The standard of corporate parenting is subject to regular review as part of Ofsted inspection. In particular, Ofsted judgements about the quality of leadership assess the extent to which the local authority is an active, strong and committed corporate parent that knows the children and young people it looks after well; is an effective and successful champion of their progress (particularly in education and learning); and an ambitious corporate parent, ensuring that each child has every opportunity to succeed.

We recognise that effective corporate parenting is everyone’s business and have consequently funded work by the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) to raise awareness of corporate parenting among elected members. This project brings local authority members and Directors of Children’s Services together with children in care councils to enhance the voice of the child and spread good practice. The project has also produced training materials which are available to all local authorities.