Why care leavers need better access to childhood records: ‘A stranger knew more about me than I did’

When Jackie McCartney first received her care records at the age of 50, a social worker arrived carrying a single battered brown box.

“That was all I was worth,” Jackie, now 59, tells the Big Issue from her home in Birmingham. “That box was my life story of residential care, with 16 years of my life inside. She told me, ‘There’s not a lot in there,’ but I wanted to talk to her. Because this total stranger knew more about my life than I did.”

Inside the box was a lever arch file of loose and incomplete papers. These were Jackie’s care records, created by the state during her childhood in care. For thousands of people who grew up in children’s homes or foster care, these files are the only written account of their early life.

Read more:

• ‘Children in care shouldn’t be a route to profit’: Baroness Lola Young on privatisation of children’s homes
• I’m a trans care leaver. Finding love and acceptance as my true self was the best feeling in the world
• Mental health support while I was in care wasn’t perfect – but now children are being turned away

Legally, they count as personal data and can be requested at any time. In reality, they hold a far deeper significance. They are the only way many care experienced people can find answers to questions they have no one left to ask. Why was I moved? Why was I separated from my sibling? Who cared about me? Who knew?

For too many people, getting hold of those answers has become a battle.

These are people fighting to access their own biography

Today (9 December), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) launches a national campaign called Better Records Together. It is designed to push councils to improve how they handle requests from people trying to access their childhood care records.

The ICO’s research, based on conversations with more than 200 care experienced people, is stark. Most reported poor communication. Most said the process took far longer than they expected. One person was still waiting 16 years after filing their request. Even among those who eventually received records, nearly nine in 10 were left with unanswered questions.

Information commissioner John Edwards is clear about why this matters.

“This is so much more than a request for personal information,” he tells the Big Issue. “These are people fighting to access their own biography and their own identity, which is in the custody of an organisation. It is a brave and emotional step. But too often these requests are met with cold bureaucracy, long delays and unexplained redactions.”

Edwards grew up in New Zealand and took up the UK post in 2022. He has been thinking about the power of records for many years. In the mid-1990s his brother disclosed that he had been abused in an adolescent psychiatric ward in the 1970s.

“I did not really know how to support him,” he recalls. “I was working in information law, so the first thing I did was access his records. They revealed a very detailed account of abuse.” That file became central evidence. Edwards later represented more than 100 former patients. His brother’s record remained the most complete.

“For me it is personal,” he says. “A care record can unlock a person’s identity. It can also unlock truths that matter for society.”

He notes that records have played a central role in British scandals such as Hillsborough, contaminated blood, Horizon and abuse in children’s homes and youth justice settings. “In every one of those cases, the starting point for understanding what happened is the record,” he says.

But this campaign is not about inquiries. It is about the quiet moment years after leaving care when someone contacts their former corporate parent and asks, “Tell me what you wrote about me.”

“Local authorities are custodians of the biography of people who have been disempowered,” Edwards says. “That responsibility is enormous. It needs to be treated as such.”

A system not designed for the child who will one day read it

Anyone can request their personal data under UK law. Organisations are meant to respond within a month. Extensions are allowed in rare, complex cases. For many care experienced people, that is not what happens. They face unanswered emails, confusing forms, disputes over which council holds which file and long stretches of silence.

When asked why delays can stretch into years, Edwards offers both sympathy and frustration. A child who enters care at two or three may move repeatedly between homes, schools and placements. By adulthood there may be hundreds of pages spread across paper and digital systems.

Even so, he is firm. “There is absolutely no justification for someone waiting 16 years.”

He explains that records were rarely created with the idea that the child would one day read them. Notes about siblings, carers and other children often appear within the same pages. In some cases a GP once listed several children on a single sheet for billing purposes. That sheet was then photocopied into each file. Handing out a copy today would reveal information about unrelated people, which cannot happen.

Redaction can be complex. Storage is inconsistent. Tracking decades-old files takes time. Edwards acknowledges all of this, but insists that the legal duty remains.

“These are not just one more item in a long list of obligations,” he says. “You owe these people these duties. You are custodians of their biographies.”

Why wasn’t I good enough to get this?

Jackie knows what it means to depend on that duty. She entered Birmingham’s residential cottage homes at five years old. She was never fostered or adopted and left care at 16. For decades she focused on survival. She worked, raised children and kept a roof over her head.

“Records were the last thing on my mind,” she says. “It was about survival.”

Everything changed when she became a mother at 29. “It triggered so many emotions,” she remembers. “How did my mum have children? How did she not want us?” Later, after reconnecting with her birth parents, she realised their stories did not match what she remembered. She requested her records to “validate my own memories”.

What she received the first time was a slim file. “Considering I spent [more than a decade] in care, there was not a lot there,” she says.

Reading even that partial account was destabilising. Months later she broke down in her kitchen.

“I thought, why was I not good enough to get this? Why was I not worth a mum and dad wanting me? In care we were told, ‘You are in here because nobody loves you, and nobody ever will.’ You carry that your whole life.”

Years later she wrote to Birmingham City Council describing the impact of her childhood in care. She assumed nothing would come of it. Instead, senior staff called and asked to meet. Jackie refused to return to the council offices of her childhood. “Little Jackie did not want to go,” she says. So they visited her at home.

During the conversation, she realised they did not understand the process she had gone through to access her file. “I was gobsmacked,” she says. That meeting led to a second request, this time with the assistant director observing every step. A third request followed years later, after the council’s chief executive saw her speaking publicly about records.

When she met him, he laid bundles of paper across a table. Together they amounted to almost four lever-arch files, far more than she had been given the first time.

“Did they only give me a little bit to keep me quiet?” she asks. “When you see the same document twice, one heavily redacted and one barely, which one is right?”

Among the papers was a photocopy of a photograph of Jackie and her sister. The council initially refused to give her the original, saying it belonged to them. She persisted. When she finally received it, she discovered a date and time written on the back. Those details had never appeared in the copy.

“They were the last photos of my sister and me before we were separated,” she says. “I only had eight photographs.”

Her story now reaches into the next generation. Recently, her four-year-old grandson asked why she did not have parents. Her daughter explained that “grandma did not get a good mummy and daddy, and she had to be taken off them”. Jackie smiles as she remembers her grandson’s response.

“He said, ‘When I get bigger, I am going to learn to fly a helicopter and rescue grandma.’”

We expect more

Across both Jackie’s and John’s accounts, the theme is the same. The person behind the file is too easily forgotten.

In the care experienced community, there is growing discussion about whether care experience should be recognised in equality law. Edwards is cautious about using labels outside his remit, but he is clear about what he expects.

“I want local authorities to remember the humanity of the task,” he says.

He returns to the battered box and the remark that “there is not much in there”. Legally, a council could say it complied. Someone asked for their records, and they received them. “But we should expect more,” Edwards says.

Better Records Together is intended to set out what “more” looks like. Clear communication, timely responses, readable files, explanations for redactions and systems designed with the understanding that the child in the record will one day read it.

The campaign itself is a form of regulation. The ICO cannot investigate every individual case, but it can ensure the issue sits on the desks of senior leaders and that enforcement follows where necessary. Councils have already faced reprimands and enforcement notices for severe delays or poor handling of records.

“If timely and positive improvements are not made, we will not hesitate to take action,” Edwards says.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life this Christmas.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – or support online with a vendor support kit or a subscription – and help people work their way out of poverty with dignity.