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Retention guidance (pdf) for the records of care-experienced and adopted people is now available.
This was created during phase 2 of the Chief Archivists in Local Government Group project to improve management and access to these social care records.
The guidance recommends records relating to individual children and young people should be kept for a minimum period of Date of Birth + 125 years (good practice), and Date of Birth + 150 years (exemplary practice).
The rationale for these retention recommendations
- is based on extensive consultation with care-experienced and adopted people, social care practitioners, and information governance and access to records practitioners. This included qualitative data about people accessing records: the oldest identified was aged 104.
- considers the information needs of care-experienced people, who often do not apply for their records until much later in life, and whose "status" under the law can significantly affect the retention of records and access to them. Since the Children Act 1989 this status (e.g. in care (‘looked after’), supported as a ‘child in need’ or as a child at risk of ‘significant harm’, adopted) is assigned based on the social care intervention they receive. Technical differences in status can significantly affect the retention of records by organisations and their availability to individuals.
- the information needs of immediate descendants, which may include medical and safeguarding issues
- aims for consistency between care and adoption records
- takes account of increased general life expectancy
- draws on extensive and detailed prior work by the Access to Care Records Campaign Group; Adoption UK Adoption Barometer; Black Care Experience; Family Action PAC-UK Big Consult; Improving Adoption Services for Adults project; Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA); Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (MacAlister Review); Joint Committee on Human Rights: The Violation of Family Life: Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949-1976; Memory Identity Rights in Records Access (MIRRA) project; National Youth Advocacy Service; Plymouth young people Listen and Care Councils; Reports of audits and
evaluation of National Adoption Service for Wales, Regional Adoption Agencies (England) and Welsh Community Care Information System; Reports of practice reviews including “child T”; Social Finance LGBTQ+ Youth in Care.
Read more in the guidance covering England and Wales (the law is different in Northern Ireland and Scotland).
Information for care-experienced and adopted people, birth parents and relatives about finding records.
