Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child Summit

Reflections on the outcomes from the Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child Summit held in Melbourne in May 2017 to envision an integrated, inclusive, rights-based archival and recordkeeping infrastructure for child-centred out-of-home care. Representing a range of community, organisational, government and professional perspectives, we came together with a common concern that recordkeeping and archiving, despite improvements flowing from the inquiries and apologies over the past two decades, continues to let down children caught up in child welfare and protection systems. With a shared recognition of the systemic nature of the problem, we met to discuss how to transform the way records for childhood out-of-home care are created, captured, managed, archived and accessed to meet lifelong identity, memory and accountability needs.