Guidance on Access to Childhood Records: Access rights of adults to documents relating to their own childhood experience of adoption or being in care

Type: Specialist Subject

 

What you will find in this resource:

Archives relating to individuals who were either adopted or placed in care during childhood are among the most sensitive and challenging with which archivists have to deal. Information contained in such documents and files may be shocking, traumatic or deeply hurtful, and raises questions of personal privacy and even personal safety. This guidance document, primarily for the use of professional archivists, aims to review the wide range of issues involved, from an international perspective, and to provide examples of archival best practice – whilst acknowledging the many variations in childhood experience, and in laws, from country to country. The document was commissioned by the then-President of ICA, following the Rome ICA Conference of 2022 and is the result of more than a year’s consultation and drafting by members of the Section on Archives and Human Rights (SAHR).

The present edition was finalised and submitted to ICA’s Executive Board in 2024.

Comments and suggestions which may be incorporated into future editions may be sent to the editor, Dr. David Sutton: d.sutton@reading.ac.uk.

 

Languages:

• English