Exploring Expertise: Accessing records for care-experienced and adopted people

Help to safeguard vital information and improve the culture, processes and experience of all involved in developing and receiving records by contributing to forthcoming guidance on managing the records of care-experienced and adopted people in England and Wales.

WATCH THE RECORDING

RESOURCES

• Archives and Records Association (ARA) - general information about the project 
• MIRRA: Memory, Identity and Rights in Records for Care Leavers - Video about the MIRRA project (with links out to other resources)
• Care Leavers Association (CLA) - Care-experienced individuals share their experiences.

This participatory session will shape forthcoming best practice guidance for managing care-experienced and adopted people’s records in England and Wales. A critical need for improvements in managing these records has been identified by many recent reports including IICSA. We aim to bring consistency to an area where currently none exists by providing clear guidance. 

Many care-experienced or adopted people reconstruct their personal histories by turning to the records created about them by social workers and care providers. Thousands of requests to view records for this purpose are made each year in England and Wales. The records – a “paper self” - have significant impacts on a care-experienced person throughout their life. However, accessing social care records is often difficult, both practically and emotionally, and can be traumatic and dehumanizing.

The managing of records is inconsistent across public, private, and voluntary care sectors. This inconsistency affects outcomes for care-experienced individuals. Across England and Wales the records of adopted and care-experienced people, who are formally classified as ‘looked-after people’, should be kept for 100 and 75 years respectively, but there are no permanent preservation protections for records in law. Moreover, some care-experienced people are omitted from the requirement for records to be retained. In addition, there are now many records sitting in digital systems which do not have a proper data migration/preservation strategy.

A current project, find out how Archives and Records Association (ARA) aims to improve storage and access to records for care-experienced people across England and Wales.

As well as this event for social workers there are four online focus groups in July for care-experienced adults and for adopted adults to shape the forthcoming guidance. For more information regarding the focus groups please contact events@corambaaf.org.uk.

PRESENTER

Sarah Wickham 

Sarah is a consultant information manager and archivist. She has worked in the public and private sector over her 30-year career. With Kevin Bolton, Sarah is delivering this project for the Chief Archivists In Local Government Group (CALGG) of the Archives and Records Association.