SUMMARY

Assessment and Action Records, a key component of the widely adopted Looking After Children system, have been criticized by Knight and Caveney (1998) for imposing white middle class assumptions about child development, for undermining the Children Act principle of partnership, and for blaming individuals instead of structural factors for shortcomings in care and poor outcomes. This response welcomes a critical scrutiny of the Looking After Children model, but argues that these particular criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of the system and a classbound view of parenting which...

SUMMARY

Assessment and Action Records, a key component of the widely adopted Looking After Children system, have been criticized by Knight and Caveney (1998) for imposing white middle class assumptions about child development, for undermining the Children Act principle of partnership, and for blaming individuals instead of structural factors for shortcomings in care and poor outcomes. This response welcomes a critical scrutiny of the Looking After Children model, but argues that these particular criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of the system and a classbound view of parenting which would deny looked after children the chance of a better quality of adult life than their families experience. Implementing Looking After Children is not an alternative to addressing the pervasive inequality and discrimination in our society (Jackson and Kilroe, 1996), but using the Assessment and Action Records makes it more likely that social workers and carers will pay attention to important aspects of children's development and be able to see more clearly how what they do or do not do relates to the outcome for the child.