Newspoints.

Holmes, David

At the time of writing, it has just been announced that the Children and Young Persons Bill will have its second reading in the House of Commons on 16 June. This debate is likely to be followed by committee stage before the summer recess. This gives BAAF and other children's organisations an important opportunity to lobby for changes to the Bill before its content is finalised and it becomes an Act of Parliament. One of the key issues that BAAF will be high-lighting strongly to MPs is that of access to care records by post-care adults.

Sharing memories, photographs and recalling significant events is commonplace within most families. But adults who, as children, were separated from their birth family by local authority care can experience enormous difficulty in finding out about their childhood--information which most of us take for granted. Many do not know even the most basic details about their family history, the reasons why they were separated from their family as children or even where to find such information.

It is estimated that 350,000 adults in the UK have spent part or all of their childhood in foster or residential care. Each year, several thousand seek access to their child care files, which have been retained by the local authority. They do so for a variety of reasons, often seeking to rebuild fractured identities and resolve deeply personal questions about their origins. Yet for many post-care adults, trying to access and receive information about their family background and time in care can be a challenging and frustrating experience. Such information requests come under the Data Protection Act 1998, which has third-party restrictions and does not take into account the special circumstances of post-care adults who mainly want to obtain a family history, including details of their parents and siblings.

A survey of local authorities in 2005 showed that the practices and policies for accessing information under the Data Protection Act varied enormously and meant that some post-care adults were receiving a second-rate service. Social workers and Access to Information Officers often struggle with what and how much information can be shared with the post-care adult. This is why BAAF will be seeking to table an amendment to the Children and Young Persons Bill 2007, designed to improve access to care files for post-care adults and to lay the groundwork for the provision of better and more consistent support to those seeking to discover and come to terms with their individual care histories. For those of you who are interested in this issue and would like to learn more, BAAF is running a conference on access to care records in London on 11 September--see www.baaf.org.uk for more details. The conference will provide an opportunity to hear the experience of post-care adults directly. It will also seek to address the ethical, legal and practical issues surrounding the disclosure of information to post-care adults within the constraints of the Data Protection Act 1998 and explore how these can be managed to ensure that they can obtain the information they need about their family background and time in care. (Also see Goddard et al, 'A childhood on paper: managing access to child care files by post-care adults', pp 50-62 of this journal.)

David Holmes, Chief Executive, BAAF