ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how complicated the relationship is between Looked After Children (LAC) and the care system. Responding to professional concern about the poor post-care outcomes for LAC, the government designed remedial policies around what it termed the “corporate parent”. The “corporate parent” was bureaucratically conceived to address two related problems in the care system. First, it provides a means to encourage professionals both to work together as joined-up around the child and to make decisions about that child as if he or she were their own child. Second, it is the vehicle for delivering policies to improve children’s post-care outcomes. Hamish Canham’s work could not be more telling about the pitfalls of managing, and the advantages of engaging and representing, the child in the minds of all involved in policy-making, service planning, and working directly with LAC.
