CARE RECORDS

From the Victorian era, the run-down Scottish building’s original purpose was not obvious. Possibly a factory? It certainly looked about ready for demolition. But whatever purposes it had served over the last century, this was surely it’s last. A storage facility for Grampian Regional Council’s historic files. Elizabeth our office manager had taken me down there. I don’t recall there being an alarm system. The only concession to security that I can remember, beyond it being on the first floor and having its own external staircase access, was the padlock on the door. 

While it was presumably watertight, there was little evidence of any recent maintenance. Beyond some florescent lights, some of which worked, there were no other concessions to the 20th century, or indeed any form of heating. And you had to watch your footing very carefully as you made your way around as there were holes in the floor. Just rows and rows of cheap metal shelving with labelled boxes – lots of labelled boxes.

This was many years ago, but we were here because we had received a letter from a man in his late 50s, who’d been in our care as a child. Prompted, he said, by his now having a serious illness, he had some basic questions about his mother. With nothing going back that far kept at headquarters, here I was searching through dusty boxes for his file. I had to call him the next day to tell him, and to somehow apologise, that we just didn’t have the information that he wanted – that he needed – that he was entitled to.

Last month I was invited to attend the online Global Records Access Information Exchange: Childhood Care Recordsevent, as some of you may have been. With a focus on Australia and Scotland, this event was organised by AberdeenCity Council (Scotland), Monash University Rights in Records by Design (Melbourne, Australia) and Social Work Scotland. Opened by David Fricker Director-General, National Archives of Australia and President, International Council on Archives, the event and its interesting range of 15+ speakers addressed:

  • rights in records

  • the language that we use

  • supports

  • systems and institutional reform

One of the stand-out presentations was from Frank Golding who talked with power and emotion about why records matter and the kinds of information that someone who is care experienced may need to be able to get from their case file. Frank will be known to many of you in Australia; care experienced himself Frank is an advocate, as he puts it, for “social justice for care leavers”.

Too often case files, are thought of as just an organisational administrative tool, or even paperwork, rather than a repository of different forms of critical information for care experienced people about their childhood. Thus files that care experienced people access are often heavily redacted, written in language or format that may be difficult to understand and follow, and may lack the most basic of information on childhood memories and relationships. The quality and nature of case records was also recently raised as a critically important issue by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

 Another stand-out presentation was on the Monash University Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care which was summarised as:

  • Valuable life record v big brother culture

  • Human framework v legal framework

  • Co-created with young person v delivered from above

  • People-centric v organisation-centric

  • Proactive disclosure v reactive disclosure.

How do care records in your organisation compare? What one action could you take today to help care experienced children, young people and future adults in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond?

More information on the Monash University charter is available from https://www.monash.edu/it/indigenous-engagement/research/lifelong-rights-in-childhood-records-for-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islanders

Iain Mathesonfile, records, care expeirenced, memories