Training and Experience: Keys to Enhancing the Utility for Foster Parents of the Assessment and Action Record from Looking After Children (Report‪)‬

Introduction Over the past decade, Looking After Children (LAC) has established itself as one of the leading approaches to organise and provide theoretical underpinning for the provision of care to children and young people looked after away from home (Parker et al, 1991; Ward, 1995; Kufeldt, Simard and Vachon, 2003). Its aim is to raise systematically the standard of corporate parenting for children in substitute care and to monitor the progress that they make on an annual basis. This approach supports the use of authoritative parenting practices that combine a high level of warmth, nurturance and support with consistent limitsetting (Steinberg et al, 1991) and a stable and nurturing relationship in the child's life.