Towards a human-centred participatory approach to child social care recordkeeping

Abstract

In 2019, there were over 75,000 children and young people in out-of-home care in England and Wales. Recent estimates suggest that up to half a million British people were in state or voluntary care as children, around 1% of the adult population. While individual experiences vary enormously by time and place, care-experienced people share in common the intensive documentation of their lives by social workers, educators, health professionals and associated practitioners. A complex, fragmented legislative and regulatory framework governs the creation and use of these records at the national level. Under UK law, a 'care file' must be retained for at least 75 years, so that a substantial legacy of care data is held across the public, voluntary and private sectors. MIRRA: Memory-Identity-Rights in Records-Access, a participatory research project co-produced with care leavers, investigated recordkeeping practices in child social care from multiple perspectives. Interviews, focus groups and workshops with stakeholders identified critical failings in the creation, use, management and access to care records, which do not account for the needs and capabilities of multiple stakeholders. These failings have a direct impact on the well-being and health of care-experienced people throughout their lives. MIRRA researchers developed a human-centred participatory recordkeeping approach to child social care, which this article describes. The approach combines the participatory continuum model (Rolan in Arch Sci 17(3):195-225. https ://doi.org/10.1007/ s1050 2-016-9267-7, 2017 and the capabilities approach to social work, rooting child social care recordkeeping in information rights principles. The article makes a contribution to the literature that discusses archival science within a human rights and ethics framework and reflects on trauma-informed practice for information professionals. It also provides guidance on practice improvements for child social care recording.

Authenticity, power and the case record: A textual analysis of the participation of children and young people in their child protection conference

“…Ethical approval for access to the electronic CPC records was granted from the University where the first and second author work and from the research governance unit in the local authority on the proviso that access to documentary data sources would be confined to the agency site. The question of ownership of the record is increasingly posed by recordkeeping as children become participatory actors in their case records (Evans et al, 2015; Evans et al, 2019; Evans et al, 2020; Shepherd et al, 2020). A case file is an agency record and produced within the legal parameters of information governance.…”

“…Recent research, together with Reviews, Inquiries and Royal Commissions into child protection systems in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, have brought attention to the complexity of child protection recordkeeping systems within child welfare systems that are characterized by technical bureaucratic and procedural reductionism (Devlieghere & Roose, 2018), the implications of poor practice in case recording and the necessity of child‐centred and participatory practices (Commonwealth of Australia, 1997, 2001, 2017; Eberhard, 2015; Evans et al, 2019; Munro, 2011; Nyland, 2016; Shepherd et al, 2020). Limitations in case records have been identified through this body of work, as well as through recent enquiries into the deaths of children (Laming, 2003; South Australian Courts, 2016).…”

‘I probably wouldn’t want to talk about anything too personal’: A qualitative exploration of how issues of privacy, confidentiality and surveillance in the home impact on access and engagement with online services and spaces for care-experienced young people

“…On entering the care system, care-experienced young people are the focus of national policies and interventions. Their lives are often paradoxically characterised by high levels of state scrutiny (Shepherd et al, 2020) but chronically poor and inconsistent state social and mental health support (Evans et al, 2021). Alongside this, carers in the home are expected to play a dual role of emotional and familial caregiver as well as paid professional held to account by authorities (Schofield et al, 2013;Hollett, Hassett and Lumsden, 2022).…”

‘These are not just pieces of paper’: Acknowledging grief and other emotions in pursuit of person-centered archives

“…Calls for and explorations of person-or human-centered recordkeeping approaches are not new but are mounting in frequency and volume. New focuses 77 on trauma-informed archival practices 78 and on 'human-centred participatory' recordkeeping for care-experienced people, 79 for example, emerge at least in part out of over a decade's worth of a shift in archival discourse to the pursuit of social justice 80 and the development of community-led, 81 reparative, 82 and liberatory praxis. 83 The voices heard in these interviews provide another lens through which to consider the urgency of this shift.…”