If you are looked after, it means a court has said that your local authority must make sure you are safe and properly cared for.  

The court does this by giving children’s services (a department in your local authority) some of the ‘parental responsibility’ for you. This means social workers are allowed to make important decisions about you, just like parents would. The social workers should make those decisions together with anyone else who has ‘parental responsibility’ for you.

Mothers always have parental responsibility and fathers often do – you can check with your social worker who exactly has parental responsibility for you.

There’s someone else very important whom social workers should discuss important decisions about your life with – you! Obviously if a child is very young, or if they have very serious learning needs, then that will affect how much they understand of what is being decided about their life. 

But the Government is very clear that your wishes, feelings and views about what happens to you are extremely important and must affect decisions that are made.