BAAF Press release, landmark report on access to files.

. BAAF PRESS RELEASE Landmark report reveals people who have been in care are denied information about their past Issued: 12 December 2005 This press release applies to UK * Results of the first UK-wide survey on the subject reveal a 'postcode lottery' in access to care files * Report calls for new laws and national standards for agencies providing information and support to people who have spent time in care * BAAF calls for all people who have been in care to have a right to information about their birth families A report to be launched on Monday, December 12 will call for the information rights of the 350,000 people who have spent time in care in the UK to be brought into line with those of adopted people. The report, co-authored by BAAF, the University of Bradford and the University of Kent, is based on the survey responses of 85 social services departments and voluntary organisations across the UK. It reveals that more than 4,000 people who spent time in care as children request access to files held by social services departments every year and that this number is rising. These files may contain formal documents and administrative information, details of birth relatives and informal notes made by social workers. Currently they come under the Data Protection Act, which says people have a right to access personal data held by social services within 40 days of a request. However, they do not have the right to third party information, so much of the contents of files - about birth relatives, for example - may be blanked out. Agencies reported frustration at the lack of guidance on how to interpret the act. Other problems included difficulties associated with previous policies to destroy records, a lack of resources and a lack of training. Information held in these files can be sensitive and evoke strong emotions, yet only 21 Access to Records Officers had received training for this work, while 47 had not. A Childhood on Paper: Accessing the Child-care Files of Former Looked After Children in the UK, was co-authored by Jim Goddard, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Bradford, Julia Feast, Policy, Research and Development Consultant for BAAF and Derek Kirton, Lecturer in Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Kent. Jim Goddard says: "Over a number of years, I had come across many adults who had accessed their care files, or tried to access them. I had also accessed my own care file, so I know how important this information is. "Many care leavers have no photographs from that time, few or no relatives who remember their childhoods and no mementoes or keepsakes. Often, their files are their only way of reaching back and of reclaiming a sense of who they are. These care files are much more than a paper record for social workers and other professionals." He adds: "Our aim has been not merely to provide a window into current services but also to promote improvements, so that care leavers throughout the UK get the service and support they need as they attempt to reclaim and rediscover the childhoods that have shaped their adult lives" Julia Feast says: "We believe all people who have spent time in care and request their files should be offered counselling and intermediary services to help them search for birth relatives. Files should be exempt from data protection legislation, as they are for adopted people. She adds: "The average age of people requesting their files in this study was 35 - and many people were much older than that. The life-long needs of adopted adults have long been recognised, but until now the needs of people brought up in care have been largely neglected." Derek Kirton says: "At present, former care leavers face a postcode lottery when they attempt to access their care records, whether in terms of the priority their local authority or voluntary organisation gives to this work or the interpretations put on the data protection legislation. This can mean vast differences in waiting times, the services and expertise available and perhaps most importantly, the information that is disclosed." Felicity Collier, BAAF Chief Executive, says: "It is absolutely unacceptable that adults who have been in care are denied the opportunity to make sense of their past. BAAF fully supports the recommendations in this important new report and calls on Government to take action now." The report makes wide-ranging recommendations, including exempting personal child-care files from data protection legislation and the introduction of legislation and national standards for agencies providing information and support to former care leavers. END OF BAAF PRESS RELEASE. _______________________________________________________ I'm still a little bemused as to why anyone should think that adopted people have easy access to their case files. Either adopted people were placed for adoption soon after birth, in which case they will have very little in the way of a care file or they were in care prior to adoption in which case they are quite likely in reality to get the same or less access to their care file than someone who grew up in care. Barnardo's have in the past combined care files in to adoption files in order to be able to refuse access to them. Will it now be the other way around, if you were adopted will details of your adoption be shifted in to your care file in order for Barnardos and all the other self aggrandising so called children charities that for all the good work they may or may not do now, utterly destroyed many families in the middle and latter of the last century. They are solely interested in protecting their individually and corporate backsides. I don't think I've ever encountered an organisation that has cared less about protecting my personal privacy and confidentiality than Barnardo's. I've had records sent to me in almost tissue paper envelopes by Barnardos so that they had to be repacked by Royal Mail in see through plastic bags, people I know who I see every day who drink at the pub with were able to read the first and most interesting page. Maybe it was even them who had to repack the whole thing my they could have read all the bits that I had to fight for years to see. I've never had anything that in the slightest resembles an apology from Banardos. Barnados have tried to insisted for many years that if wanted to see my medical records from care and have copies then they would have to be sent to my GP, where in a small village several people working at the surgery were friends of my adoptive family. I have only recently received some parts of those medical directly after over ten years of fighting. Parts of my file simply disappeared from Banados for over five years then suddenly reappeared without explanation. Other parts have supposedly been lost by Hays DX but no one from Barnardos or Campbell Hooper its solicitors seemed to think it of any importance to investigate why. I've still not seen many parts of my file. Now they are saying perhaps I can see the remainder if I sign a secrecy agreement or an agreement not publish any aspect of these things that happened 50 years ago. So, Felicity Collier, BAAF Chief Executive and her friends from all the old children charities that were operating in the post-war years of the 20th century anxious to see that anyone adopted or raised in care has proper access to their record. That's got to be the biggest joke I'm going to hear this Christmas Holliday, I'm not going to find anything that funny in my Christmas Cracker . Robin Harritt [url]http://harritt.net[/url] *