Creating and managing adopted and care-experienced people’s records

Many adopted and care-experienced people reconstruct their personal histories by turning to the records created about them by social workers and care providers. Across England and Wales the records of adopted and care-experienced people who are formally classified as ‘looked-after people’ (who are a small subset of care-experienced people) should be kept for 100 and 75 years respectively, but what forms that record and how should it be managed?  Building on the work of MIRRA (https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/mirra/), a research project funded by ARA, The National Archives and CALGG is seeking to answer these questions and establish clearer parameters for the management, retention and access processes for these records. Whilst this work will be particularly pertinent to local authority records managers and archivists, it touches on wider information management questions around ownership, agency and enablement of the voice of marginalised individuals in their records and life story.