Supporting Adult Care-Leavers by Murray Suellen

Author:Murray, Suellen [Murray, Suellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family & Relationships, Adoption & Fostering, Political Science, Public Policy, Social Services & Welfare, Social Science, Gerontology, Social Work
ISBN: 9781447313632
Google: X_kwCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2015-12-16T05:30:12+00:00

Photos

When seeking their records, adult care-leavers often request photos from their childhood. For those who spent much or all of their childhood in care, they may have no photos from this period of their life. They may want photos of themselves or others with whom they grew up, or images of special events that occurred during their childhood. They may want photos that are reminders of staff who they remember warmly, the sites where they lived and examples of daily life in the children’s home. Finding a photo, and other records, may be the only traces that an adult care-leaver is able to acquire of their childhood.

Not uncommonly, institutions do hold photos, and some hold very large collections. These photos may have been taken by staff or the children themselves over the years in either regular or ad hoc ways, but are not necessarily now organised in ways that make them readily accessible. They may not be catalogued, but rather stored in boxes or albums marked by year but little else. Typically, individuals in the photos are not identified by name, so there are further difficulties in tracing the subject of those photos. To ensure their accessibility, there are also issues, then, concerned with archiving and digitising. Like other records management, there are major resourcing issues in ensuring that photos are looked after for the long term.

Where photo collection databases have yet to be put in place, or where cataloguing and identifying are still a work in progress, a common practice to assist adult care-leavers to find photos is to give them albums to browse of those years when they were in care. This also gives them opportunities to see photos of others they knew, and the circumstances of their life at this time. This work, of course, should be done with care and support, as photos can be powerful triggers of childhood memories, both positive and negative. Where photos are found, copies are made for them to keep. They can also assist in identifying others in the photos for future reference. Sometimes, at reunions of children’s homes, photo albums are displayed for former residents to browse.

One concern raised in Australia, at least, is that photos can include information about others (their images) and it may be in contravention of privacy legislation to release such an identifiable image if the photo was taken in a private situation within a children’s home (for example in contrast to a school class photo intended for shared ownership). In this private situation, it is argued, the images of others should be redacted by blurring their faces, unless these people give consent for their image to be shared. However, like the matter of redacted written records, this is an action that can cause great distress to adult care-leavers. Again, the redaction represents a loss of access to information about their childhood experience. Another strategy that has been employed is to provide full images on the condition that they are for personal use only, and not to be distributed in public ways, with this information stamped on the back of the photo.

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