Supporting care-leavers to access their records

A coherent account of our life that connects the past to the present is important to our sense of self and identity. When there are gaps in this narrative it is experienced as a disruption to our sense of self, as evident in... [ view full abstract ]

A coherent account of our life that connects the past to the present is important to our sense of self and identity. When there are gaps in this narrative it is experienced as a disruption to our sense of self, as evident in the accounts of care-leavers. Many children who grew up in care in previous decades did not know their family nor where they came from. Others were placed in care and separated from family members and over time lost contact with them. Others again had some contact with their family but never understood why they were placed in care or how decisions had been made about their lives. The process of institutionalisation facilitated this loss of identity and family, and lack of knowledge about childhood experiences. When children had lived part of their childhood with their family and were placed into care, in some circumstances, parents could be advised not to keep in contact to facilitate a ‘clean start’ for their children. Among children in care, separation of family members could occur in a number of ways, including by age and sex. Personal records created by agencies that had statutory responsibility for children in care and the organisations that provided the care are sources of information about care-leavers' family and childhood experiences. This paper will first identify the needs of this group of people in relation to access to their personal records, and then outline policy and practice issues. A key issue is that those working in the area of records release understand the significance of the records and that this knowledge then informs the way they work with care-leavers. When practitioners appreciate the importance of the records, it changes their practice from an administrative task to supported release, and the paper concludes by highlighting key elements of a process of supported release of records to care-leavers. The paper is informed by research with care-leavers who accessed their records and with staff from record-holding organisations and support services in the UK, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia.