Corporate services

Those of us working in the central services such as finance or human resources may feel more removed from the corporate parent role; if you don’t deliver frontline services to children and young people how can you be a good corporate parent? But your work impacts directly on the experience that looked after children and young people and care leavers receive. It is also the area in which systems and procedures, generally in place for sound reasons, can feel the most bureaucratic and obstructive, leading to the call for “less of the corporate and more of the parenting”.

Finance

Robust financial procedures are required for audit purposes and to reassure council taxpayers that their money is being spent appropriately. However, central purchasing systems and bulk-buying do not readily provide flexibility, nor do they allow children and young people to learn about how households buy their supplies. Most families do not have time-consuming hierarchies of authorisation for even quite small amounts of expenditure, to enable, for example, a mobile phone to be topped up or transport to be arranged.

The challenge for financial managers is to make sure sound financial management while at the same time making sure that children and young people are not disadvantaged or isolated from their peers by bureaucracy.

Purchasing and commissioning

Increasingly, councils and NHS boards purchase services from the independent sector both within their own local area and outwith. This brings with it many challenges, not the least of which is the need to secure Best Value. It is essential that purchasers and providers alike demonstrate best value and consider what option is best for the child. The Getting It Right For Every Child model promotes professionals working together continuously to make sure that services meet the needs of the child at the time those needs are identified and are reviewed regularly to recognise where changing needs require changing solutions.

Purchased services could be care placements, educational placements or specific specialist inputs such as therapeutic interventions or models of support to address, for example, risk-taking behaviour. There are particular issues when a child is placed outwith their own local authority and a long way from home. As well as emotional challenges out of authority placements can bring administrative challenges such as who pays for services.

Human resources

The HR function also has a key contribution to make to the corporate parent function. The challenge is to think of innovative ways to engage in improving outcomes for looked after children and young people, through good personnel practice, sound leadership and management, forward-thinking organisational development and realising the potential of councils as employers. 

Councils are often the largest employer in a local area with a wider range of jobs than any other organisation in either the public or the private sector. Councils should be able to offer looked after children and young people and care leavers support into employment, whether this be in terms of work experience or building capacity such as preparing job applications or interview skills. It could also be through reserving a number of apprenticeships or training placements for their care leavers, sometimes referred to as “the family firm” concept.

This is not to suggest preferential treatment, but rather to fully utilise the potential to expose young people who are looked after to the range of employment options which are available to them and the skills they need to take them up. What other parent has access to such a range of jobs – administrative work, caring, finance, sport, education and childcare, engineering and trades, to name but a few? Some councils even have theatres and art galleries, harbours or ski slopes. When we broaden this out to encompass the whole corporate family, there are even more options.

When providing support to young people in accessing employment, it is important to preserve their privacy and keep the experience as “normal” as possible. Information about a young person’s background should only be shared where absolutely necessary and staff should have a good understanding of how that information should be used.

Care leavers consistently report being discriminated against when applying for jobs. Thinking around equalities has moved on considerably since the 1980s in favour of a generic approach to tackling disadvantage, although some groups remain protected in law. Where there are groups of people locally who experience persistent disadvantage, you should take action to addressing that. For example, care leavers may need additional support when they first start working in the same way that other disadvantaged groups do.

Risk

Much of our corporate activity is designed to assess, minimise and manage risk. Whether this is through robust financial or human resource procedures, health and safety functions or planning and evaluation of services, it is critically important in relation to looked after children and young people and care leavers – any risk to children is of significance and it essential that councils make sure the safety of the children and young people in their care. As well as the risk to children, councils and their community planning partners must manage financial risk and risk to reputation. 

It is little wonder then that public services can seem risk-averse. However, it is an important part of growing up for children and young people to learn how to take risks, how to take responsibility for themselves and their behaviour and we must be careful not to deny them that opportunity through risk-averse behaviours.

Professionals working with children, and particularly senior managers must strike a balance between protection and preventing young people developing essential life skills.