Towards Transformative Practice in Out of Home Care: Chartering Rights in Recordkeeping

Abstract

The CLAN Rights Charter asserts rights in records for Care leavers who were taken from their homes and families and communities, and placed in orphanages, children’s Homes, foster Care and other forms of institutions. The Australian Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out of Home Care is a response to the critical, largely unmet recordkeeping and archival needs of both children and young people in Care today, and Care leavers, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and their families, and Stolen Generations. It focuses on their lifelong and diverse recordkeeping needs. The recordkeeping rights specified in both Charters are essential enablers for the exercise of human rights, including participatory, identity, memory and accountability rights. They provide a rights-based foundation for addressing the continuing recordkeeping failures, the major gaps in the archival record, and the weaponisation of data and records that plague the Care sector. In the paper, we discuss the research and advocacy contexts of the two interrelated Charters, and our mapping of the Charters aimed at cross-validation and identification of gaps. We then explore the challenge of translating the Charters into transformative practice, advocating for their adoption and developing guidelines for their implementation.