Reformulating current recordkeeping practices in out-of-home care: recognising the centrality of the archive

Abstract

Social workers have historically had an ambivalent relationship with recordkeeping. A multi-disciplinary action research project, ‘Who am I?’, has brought together social workers, archivists and historians to investigate the role of records as a resource for identity construction for children currently in out-of-home care, and for adults who were in care as children. Maintaining a focus on children growing up in out-of-home care, their identity needs, and the way in which records can support them, this paper discusses a range of problems arising from current recordkeeping practices within the Victorian out-of-home care sector. These are examined in the light of conceptual frameworks brought by the archival and social work disciplines. While out-of-home care practitioners and their organisations have much to learn from archival methods, recordkeeping professionals also need to recognise the relevance of their role to how records are created in the first place, in order to ensure that personal records remain relevant and accessible across the lifespan of children and young people who grow