New Clause 16
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
Public Bill Committees, 3 July 2008, 2:15 pm
Annette Brooke (Shadow Minister (Children, Young People and Families), Children, Schools and Families; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)
I shall speak to new clauses 21 and 22. I do not disagree with anything said by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. The purpose of the clauses are linked. The first is on the duty to keep records. Whatever should be in those records and how it should be transferred would, I assume, be dealt with in regulation. The details and possibly the medical records, too, could be the subject of regulation. The second is on the duty to provide access to records, on which I particularly want to speak.
It is estimated that 350,000 adults in the United Kingdom have spent all or part of their childhood in foster or residential care. The sharing of memories and photographs—all the things that we do with our own families—are not possible for most post-care adults. They may in due course want to make contact with parents and siblings, but that might not be possible. Each year, an estimated 4,000 requests are made by post-care adults for access to files. They do so for many reasons—to rebuild part of their lives, to build self-esteem or because they need to know about their past identity and relationships.
Requests by post-care adults for access to childhood information held in records retained by the local authority come under the Data Protection Act 1998. That Act, however, is not an effective way of meeting the information needs of post-care adults. It imposes restrictions on birth party information, and it does not take account of the plight of post-care adults who want to obtain their family history and details of their parents and siblings.
For many years, rightly so, legislation has been in place to assist adopted people to access support. Today, I am looking for equality of treatment. The same opportunities do not extend to post-care adults, and it could be argued that until they do so those adults will continue to receive a second-rate service, compared with adopted people.