The simple things that matter most…
Pauline Turner
Monday, June 19, 2023
The varying number of national and regional initiatives, pathfinders and pilots emerging out of the government’s plan to reform the children’s social care system, Stable Homes Built on Love, have occupied many of our regional conversations over the last couple of months.
As ever, this has required us all to work and think collaboratively across our regions while also doing the “day job” back at the office. Amid the many national and regional discussions where I play my part, my energy and enthusiasm is driven by the variety of conversations I have with our children and young people. This helps me stay grounded and focused on what more we can do to support children’s needs locally.
While Hull City Council has embraced its corporate parenting responsibilities anew over the past couple of years, we all know that there is always more to do. So, following on from an enthusiastic response to fostering fortnight across the council and our partners, many of whom are pursuing or have adopted Fostering Friendly Employer status, we launched our inaugural Corporate Parenting week, which ran over the recent half term break.
Yes, corporate parenting is a ‘day in and day out’ responsibility all year round, but we wanted the opportunity to reinvigorate people’s awareness right across the council of our corporate parenting responsibilities. We had a wide range of events across the council, co-designed by our young people.
Leaders and staff, across all council directorates, completed the LGA corporate parenting self-assessment, renewing and making new pledges which informs our corporate parenting action plan. The LGA has facilitated training for elected members and we were particularly keen to include those who were recently newly elected. We also held a range of fun activities for children and young people that adults were also allowed to join! This helped to build and strengthen our relationships.
We have an established Total Respect training offer for staff, facilitated by young people who have been trained and who routinely give up part of their holidays to deliver the training. However, the highlight of the corporate parenting week were the bitesize Total Respect sessions.
These allowed far greater numbers of senior leaders, managers and frontline staff from across the council to experience sessions delivered by our children in care council, Young Voices Influencing Care (YVIC). Many attendees gave great feedback summed up in this quote: “Spent a positive and thought-provoking hour this afternoon with talented young people of Hull, they taught us how to promote their rights and needs as part of corporate parenting week.”
The power of children having the opportunity to share their experiences in this way was immense and resulted in new recruits to the champions group. This is a voluntary role which involves working as part of a group to inspire change and improve awareness of our corporate parenting responsibilities throughout the year.
Our week ended with the ‘Dream On’ sing along which was a huge hit. We had a room full of people and, along with our young people, we sang our hearts out, karaoke style!
The young people’s powerful opening pitch reminded us of the important messages from the ‘Dream On’ animation and the importance of belonging. The young people enjoyed the event and told us that people coming to hear them, join them in singing and dancing, really made them feel heard and cared for. This reminded me that it is the simple things that matter most – listening and caring. If you’ve not seen ‘Dream On’ already, or even if you have, take a look.
Pauline Turner is director of children, young people and family services at Hull City Council and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) regional chair for Yorkshire and Humber. This blog was first published on the ADCS website.
