We are proud to announce that Slough Borough Council’s Corporate Parenting Strategy for 2024-27 has been approved by Cabinet.
The strategy sets out our commitment and care as corporate parents, to our children and young people who are looked after and those who are care experienced.
It has been developed alongside children, young people, carers, and partners, in order for us to have clear aspirations for our children ‘as if this were my child’. It also sets out clearly to our children and young people, what they can expect from us.
We set out our priorities as:
- education, training, and employment
- stable homes for our children
- we will listen to the voices of our children and young people, and we will respond
- we want all of our children to be healthy, including having access to mental health and emotional wellbeing support
- we will build a care leavers’ partnership
- our children and young people will have fun!
We have also outlined promises, developed with our children and young people, to help them be healthy, be ambitious, be resilient, be happy, be independent and be safe.
Slough Borough Council and Slough Children First look after 212 children and we support 171 care experienced young people in a variety of home settings.
Our foster carers are hugely important to us and to our children and we are always looking for new carers. Because of this, it was important that our strategy demonstrated our vision, ambition and how we would listen to their voices and ensure they are heard.
Councillor Puja Bedi, cabinet member responsible for education and children’s services, said: “Producing the Corporate Parenting Strategy for the next three years has been a collaborative piece of work between our partners, involving our looked after children and carers. It includes comprehensive priorities that are clear and easily understandable for our children and young people. Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard on producing this strategy and who works hard every day to ensure that our looked after children thrive.”
Councillor Christine Hulme, chair of the Corporate Parenting Panel, said: “This strategy puts our looked after children at the forefront, developed in collaboration with our young people, children, and their carers, we want them to achieve the best they can whilst in our care. Their health, safety, and happiness are our top priority, and throughout the strategy we have set out our commitments to them.” To view the full strategy, please visit sloughchildrenfirst.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Slough-Corporate-Parenting-Strategy-2024-27.pdf.
This can also be found on SBC’s website: https://www.slough.gov.uk/strategies-plans-policies/corporate-parenting.