Welcome to FamilyConnect

Welcome to the Professional Pathway on the Family Connect Website (FCN). This is a recent addition to the resources available for Care-experienced and Adopted People over the age of 18 years, as well as birth relatives of people who have been adopted.

The content in Professional Pathway has been produced for professionals who are involved in providing services for adopted and care-experienced people, taking into account the needs of those people as they try to access information through time about:

• Their family background;
• The circumstances of why they were adopted or placed/ taken into care;
• Understanding the decisions that were taken whilst they were in care;
• Their life in care including their achievements;
• How to undertake a search for family members;
• Information about Intermediary Services and how to access these to help them make contact with birth relatives.

Who are these pages for?

These pages are relevant to social care practitioners who provide direct support services to adopted and care-experienced people, such as those accessing records, administrators, records managers, data protection officers, archivists, regulators and all those involved in ensuring the long-term care and respect of rights of adopted and care-experienced people throughout their lives. This may also include a wide range of people from healthcare experts, staff at schools and colleges, right through to prison officials.

There are two pathways through the guidance, one which relates to adoption practices and the other with care contexts. They have been divided due to the different laws and practice guidance that exist in these spaces. However, they will include subject areas that are relevant to help practitioners become more knowledgeable, resourceful, skilled and confident. These sections provide:

• suggestions for best practice
• what we know about research
• resources and signposting to other relevant information and organisations.

The content in the Professional Pathway section is dynamic, and new content will be added in due course on a range of areas to provide opportunities for practitioners to increase their knowledge base and help ensure that care-experienced and adults affected by adoption receive high quality services and the support they may need and request.

This content seeks to provide introductory guidance on how to centre adopted and care-experienced persons’ care including considerations around the creation and management of their information and records through time.

This guidance has been developed through research drawing on the lived experiences of care-experienced and adopted people, drawing on an extensive evidence base.

Working as a practitioner involved in creating, managing and providing access to adoption and child social care records is complex, challenging, and carries a significant degree of emotional labour. This guidance will also address the often-unspoken risk of secondary trauma, compassion fatigue and burn out for practitioners working in this space by providing clear definitions and examples and introducing approaches to reduce the likelihood of harm for professional workers.

Further links to additional resources and references are provided. It is to be noted in particular that this information draws on the work of the MIRRA research project and its work with Family Connect, the Care Leavers Association and the Access to Records Campaign Group. Through the MIRRA evidence base, and these critical charity and campaign organisations, the lived experiences of care-experienced people has been centred and drawn in. Resulting from this work, significant projects have been undertaken with professional bodies include the British Association of Social Workers (most particularly the 80/20 Group), the Archives and Records Association, and the Information and Records Management Society. In addition, work has been undertaken with regulators including the Information Commission and Ofsted.