Corporate parenting means that different organisations work together to help children and young people who are in care. These organisations have special responsibilities to support these young people until they are 26 years old. They make sure that these kids have their rights protected and get the best chances in life. Corporate Parents are responsible for #KeepingThePromise. Learn more about The Promise Scotland through the website opens a new window. 

Corporate parents have specific duties and responsibilities toward CECYP up to the age of 26. Corporate parents help ensure the rights of care experienced people are upheld, and that they have the best chances and outcomes in life.

A corporate parent is the name given to an organisation or person who has special responsibilities to care experienced children and young people. Those organisations include NHS Health Boards (like NHS Lothian), the police, the fire service, local authorities (including East Lothian, Edinburgh Midlothian and West Lothian), social work services, and many more. Learn more about corporate parenting duties and responsibilities through Who Cares Scotland’s website opens a new window.

Corporate Parents Include:

Who Cares? Scotland asked a group of Care Experienced people what they needed from their Corporate Parents to feel supported and listened to. This video shares what they need.

Previously, these individuals were referred to as “looked after.” Although “care experienced” isn’t a legal term, it’s one which the Independent Care Review heard has special meaning for many of the people who identify with it.

The Promise Scotland lays out that “care experienced” is a term which tries to acknowledge that, for some people:

The sense of being in care is a shared experience | Two different care experienced people may have been in very different situations. But they may find their experiences still had a lot in common, in ways which someone who wasn’t care experienced couldn’t identify with.

Care is an experience, but not one that totally defines you | Although going into care can affect a person, it doesn’t sum up everything about them. The phrase care experienced conveys this— a thing you experience doesn’t convey the whole of what you are.

Language should put the person it talks about at the centre | For a long time, people talked about “looked after” children and young people. But that phrase puts the focus on the people taking care of them. Care experienced conveys it’s what happens to a child that matters, because what matters is the child themselves.

This video shares ‘Sam’s’ experience of going into care and what the removal of this scaffold of support can look like in real life. It is a composite story comprised of experiences shared with Who Cares? Scotland by the people they support.