Lambeth Council’s duty to keep in touch with care leavers
Corporate Parent
The term Corporate Parent describes the responsibility that a local authority has towards children and young people who are, or have previously been, in its care.
For Lambeth’s children in care and care leavers, Lambeth Council is your Corporate Parent. This responsibility is shared across the council, its staff, elected members and relevant partner agencies.
Being a good Corporate Parent means doing everything we reasonably can to support you to be safe, happy, healthy and able to achieve your ambitions. We should advocate for you and seek the same positive opportunities and outcomes that any good parent would want for their own child.
Our commitment to keeping in touch with you
An important part of being a good Corporate Parent is keeping in touch with our care leavers.
If you are a Lambeth care leaver aged between 21 and 25, and your case was closed before your 25th birthday because you were no longer receiving an active service from the council, Lambeth will take steps to maintain contact with you.
Keeping in touch is important because we want you to know that you remain part of the Lambeth care leaver community and can contact us if you need advice, guidance or support.
We also want to make sure that you know about the support and opportunities that may be available to you as you move through adulthood and become increasingly independent.
How we keep in touch
We will seek to make contact with Lambeth care leavers aged 21 to 25 whose cases have been closed before their 25th birthday once every three months.
We will normally contact you by letter in the first instance. Where appropriate, we may also follow this up by:
- telephone
- text message
This gives you an opportunity to let us know how you are doing, update your contact details and tell us if there is anything you would like advice or support with.
Please let us know if your address, telephone number, email address or other contact details change. Keeping your details up to date will help us to stay connected with you.
Getting support
You do not need to wait for us to contact you.
If you need advice or support, would like to find out what help may be available to you, or simply want to update your contact details, please contact us:
16+ Service Duty Number: 0207 926 6315
We want our care leavers to feel supported, connected and valued, and to know how to reach Lambeth when they need us.
Care leavers aged 16 to 20
If you are a Lambeth care leaver aged 16 to 20 (except qualifying care leavers), different arrangements apply because you should normally be receiving ongoing support through your allocated worker and pathway planning arrangements. Your allocated worker is expected to be in contact with you every eight weeks and it is important that you maintain contact for us to be able to support you.
Find out more about support available to care leavers.