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Children Looked After & Corporate Parenting

Corporate Parenting is when the Local Authority takes on the role of a parent to a child in its care.

We have a duty to act as a good parent to children and young people in our care and those in the process of leaving care. Sometimes we will share parental responsibility with a child's parents.

Hartlepool Borough Council has the same high aspirations for the children it looks after as every good parent. We want the children and young people in our care to enjoy good health, to be safe and happy, to do well at school, to have good relationships with other children and young people and to eventually become independent, successful adults. 

When a child becomes looked after, there must be a sufficient range of accommodation options available to be able to match the child to a placement that will meet his/her needs. It is our aim that children and young people experience being cared for in a nurturing environemnt with a sense of belonging which will support the child experiencing stability at the earliest opportunity and this can only be achieved if we have quality Carers and provision is varied and can meet a range of needs. 

This document sets  out how Hartlepool Borough Council will ensure that there is suffient accommodation of all types for children in care and how it will meet its suffiency duty as laid down in Section 22G of the Children Act 1989. 

There are many reasons why children need to be looked after. However, these reasons tend to mean that those children are at a disadvantage compared to their peers. Therefore, it is important that, as Corporate Parents, we make sure that their experiences in our care are positive and aim to lessen this disadvantage, if not remove it all together. 

Many staff from across Child and Adult Services play a part in our role as Corporate Parent. They are support by our Fostering and Adoption team and our Foster Carers.