The Corporate Parenting Board is one of the most deeply human and ethically significant committees within Ambridge District Council’s governance structure. It exists to fulfil the council’s statutory role as “corporate parent” to children and young people who are looked after by the local authority — those who, for reasons of safety, family breakdown, or circumstance beyond their control, are in the care of the council and for whom the council carries the responsibilities that a loving and attentive parent would ordinarily provide.

Chaired by Rebecca Shaw, the Board operates as an Executive-type committee under committee code AMB-CPB-012 within the current 2025 municipal year, with a quorum of four members. As a top-level body with no parent committee, it reports directly to the full Ambridge Council and carries its mandate with the weight and seriousness that the lives of looked-after children demand.

Corporate parenting is not a bureaucratic concept — it is a profound commitment. When a child enters the care of Ambridge District Council, every elected councillor and senior officer becomes, in a legal and moral sense, responsible for that child’s wellbeing, development, and future. The Corporate Parenting Board is the mechanism through which that collective responsibility is given structure, focus, and accountability. It ensures that the council does not merely administer care, but actively champions the interests of the children and young people it looks after, in the same way that any good parent would advocate for their child.

The Board’s work spans the full arc of a young person’s experience in care. It monitors the quality of placements and living arrangements, scrutinises educational attainment and school attendance for looked-after children, oversees health and emotional wellbeing provision, and tracks outcomes for care leavers as they transition into adulthood and independent living. The evidence is clear that children who leave care without adequate support face significantly worse outcomes across a range of measures — and the Board exists, in part, to ensure that Ambridge does not add to those statistics.

A central principle of corporate parenting is that the voice of the child must be heard. The Corporate Parenting Board is committed to meaningful engagement with looked-after children and care leavers, ensuring that the young people whose lives are most directly affected by the council’s decisions have a genuine say in shaping the services provided to them. This is not tokenistic consultation — it is a recognition that young people in care have experiences, perspectives, and insights that no councillor or officer can replicate, and that good corporate parenting requires listening as much as it requires acting.

The Board also plays a critical role in holding partner agencies to account. The council does not support looked-after children in isolation — health services, education providers, housing authorities, and voluntary sector organisations all have a role to play, and the Corporate Parenting Board ensures that these partnerships are functioning effectively and that every agency is fulfilling its responsibilities to the children of Ambridge. Where gaps exist, the Board has both the authority and the determination to demand that they are closed.