A Childhood on Paper: managing access to child care files by post-care adults

Although the potential importance of care file information for those formerly in care has long been recognised, little is known about requests for access to care records, whether in terms of scale or how requests are dealt with. To address this gap, a survey was carried out in two stages during 2004 and 2005. The first stage was a postal questionnaire to local authorities in the UK (with 81 responses received) and a small number of voluntary organisations. This was followed by 40 telephone interviews with key local authority and voluntary sector actors dealing with access to records requests. Areas of interest within the study included policy and practice in relation to the retention, storage and retrieval of files; the handling of requests, including by whom; the provision of services (e.g. counselling and intermediary services); and the impact of the Data Protection Act 1998 on the handling of access requests. Two overarching and related themes emerged from the study. First, policy, practice and service provision vary enormously between agencies, creating a ‘post-code lottery’ for post-care adults. Second, such provision is often poor in comparison with that offered to adopted adults, thereby raising the question of whether the current legal and policy framework for access to care records is adequate.