Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care

Statement of Endorsement in Principle

The Council of Australasian Archives and Records Authorities (CAARA) endorses in principle the Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care.

The Charter can be accessed at Monash University.

All Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local public institutions and care providers are strongly encouraged to commit to the ideals and aspirations of the Charter, including:

Participatory rights for people in care, and care leavers to contribute to records of care.
Rights to be remembered or forgotten in the records of care.
Individual and collective rights to cultural, family and self-identity, and to have one’s cultural or community recordkeeping practices recognised in legal, bureaucratic and other processes that involve records creation.
Disclosure rights relating to knowing and being informed of where your records are held, being informed about the type(s) of records held about you, being informed of when and why others are given access to your records; and knowing when and why records about you are destroyed.
Access rights relating to lifelong access to your records in a timely way and at low-cost, having a say in intergenerational access, consenting to access and use of your records by others.

CAARA acknowledges that the capability and capacity of organisations to meet the ideals and aspirations of the Charter will vary, and that organisations may take different approaches to achieving this goal.

This endorsement of the Charter indicates CAARA’s support for the ambitions of the Charter and organisations engaging with the people that are, or have been, entrusted to their care by prioritising, promoting and resourcing actions that support the Charter.