The UK’s information commissioner has raised alarm over the “lengthy, traumatic and often demoralising process” people face when trying to access their care records, writing to local authority leaders to say his office will take action over legal breaches.
The data protection regulator said people who grew up in the care system were waiting up to 16 years for access to their records, and in some cases found their files had been destroyed, lost or were provided only with extensive redaction.
The commissioner, John Edwards, said requests were “too often met with cold bureaucracy, long delays and pages of unexplained redactions, which can have devastating consequences”.
“For people in care, these files are an important part of understanding their personhood and their development. It’s restoring to them the insights into how they have become who they are,” he said.
“But there’s a lack of compassion. Local authorities are stretched and the humanity can disappear. But this is a product of really bad record-keeping systems that have not been upgraded over generations.”
On Tuesday, Edwards wrote to all UK local authority leaders calling for change in how councils respond to requests for records, and warning that his office would take action when they fail to comply with guidance.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has recently served Bristol city council with an enforcement notice for delays involving child social care data, and it fined the Scottish charity Birthlink £18,000 after it destroyed 4,800 personal records, including handwritten letters and photographs.
An ICO survey found that more than two-thirds of people struggled with poor communication from their local authority when requesting their care files, and 69% said the process took too long, with some still waiting up to 16 years later.
John-George Nicholson has struggled with the extensive use of redaction in his files. Photograph: Information Commissioner’s Office
John-George Nicholson, 48, grew up in the care system, and first applied for his care records almost 25 years ago. He received a bundle of 126 pages that became one of his most important possessions – one of the few things he packed when he went travelling.
He recently found out that hundreds of pages had been omitted, and he now has a set of almost 800 pages that he never knew existed.
“I don’t understand how it’s possible to get such different files. How are the records kept? Why is it that suddenly, later on, there were more records? That’s a really big chunk of my life,” he said. “They are tough and often traumatic to read, but they are also a kind of treasure chest.
“When you’re trying to make sense of what it’s like to grow up without your parents and in other people’s houses, you want people to take care over how they document that.”
He has also struggled with the extensive redaction in the files, which included the name of his brother who he grew up with, and who recently died unexpectedly.
“There’s something about him being redacted in that way that is really difficult to see. It just seems farcical to me. When you’ve grown up in the care system, you’re often last in the queue of what matters to people. The first thing in the queue is they want to protect themselves,” he said.
Edwards said access to records was important for individuals but also in holding services to account, pointing to last year’s landmark report in New Zealand that found 200,000 children were abused in state care.
He is spearheading a Better Records Together campaign, with new standards on how to handle requests and a UK-wide pilot monitoring the performance of 19 organisations.
Jackie McCartney, a care-experienced campaigner and ambassador for the Rees Foundation, said: “I can remember the social worker arriving with my care records – she carried one old battered brown box. That was all I was worth. That box was my life story of residential care, with 16 years of my life inside.
“She told me not to worry – ‘there’s not a lot in there’. I can still feel the pain and disappointment. My records were not even in date order, with whole years of my life missing. The whole process must have more compassion and care.”
Responding to the research by the ICO, Amanda Hopgood, the chair of the Local Government Association’s Children, Young People and Families Committee, said: “Councils want to ensure people have access to their care records without delay and to be able to move more quickly on releasing records.
“However, many councils lack the resource to do so, as a result of historic funding pressures. There is also the additional challenge of older records being generally paper-based, so this can require more work and take longer.”
