Desperately seeking substance

Adopted adults are legally able to access their family history, so why are those brought up in care blocked from discovering their past?

For most of his life, 52-year-old David Wood has longed to know who his family is. He was brought up in residential care from the age of four, but the few details he knows of his early childhood are vague and unreliable. He has attempted several times to gain access to his personal files held by social services, but these have been fruitless. No one is prepared to tell Wood the truth about his life.

He is not alone. An estimated 350,000 adults in the UK spent part or all of their childhood in care, and each of them will have had a care file during that time. But unlike adopted adults - who by law can access information about their past, as well as get help with searching for birth relatives - former care adults are unable to get formal access to the information.

The result is that many do not know even the most basic details about their family history, or even the reasons why they were separated from their family as children. "Knowing our origins is a natural desire in all of us. It gives us a sense of understanding and belonging," says Wood. "But my social services have continually put up barriers, mostly legal barriers concerning the Data Protection Act.

Right to privacy

"Adopted people are exempt from this act, but as someone who was brought up in care, I am not. This means I am not entitled to any information supplied by a third party, which is just about everything. Their right to privacy seems to outweigh my right to life."

Wood made his first formal bid for access to files in the early 1990s. After many phone calls and letters, a social worker agreed to tell Wood something about his family. "He proceeded to tell me that I had two half-brothers and a half-sister," Wood says. "I was absolutely delighted."

But the social worker refused to help Wood search for them, saying it was not within his remit, but he did provide their names, dates of birth and a number for an organisation that could help him carry out a search.

In 1995, a researcher engaged by Wood reported that Wood's siblings could not be traced, but had found his mother. However, his excitement vanished a few weeks later, when social services informed him that the information he was given about his siblings was incorrect and the person he believed to be his mother was, in fact, not his mother. The records, it appeared, were incorrect. "I cannot describe the distress I felt at this devastating news," he says. "Now, I don't even know if my birth certificate is actually mine."

Wood submitted a formal complaint, demanding to see his files so that he could see where the error had been made. But again, social services refused on legal grounds. More recently it informed Wood that his files have been lost. "With nothing to go on about my past, it makes it very difficult to move on with my life," he says. "Even if the information isn't pleasant, at least you're not constantly wondering."

Wood's case led to a House of Lords debate earlier this year about the lifelong needs of former care adults. The debate, led by Baroness Liz Barker, heard calls for government and local authorities to redress the balance between former care adults and adopted people. "The truth is that when we brought in the relevant legislation around adopted adults, we didn't realise that children who were in care or who had been fostered had a different status," says Barker. "So we're now trying to address that. But the government is extraordinarily resilient to change and I don't understand why."

Jim Goddard, senior lecturer in social policy at Bradford University and co-author with Derek Kirton of a report launched next week on the subject, believes he knows why. "Most members of the public automatically sympathise with the need for an adopted person to know who their birth family is. So it's easier to generate support for them," he says. "But it is more difficult to get sympathy for the needs of former care adults because there is this misperception that they may be in care due to their own fault."

For many adults trying to access their care files, time is tight. Research shows they are generally older when they apply for information about their background - an average of 49 years old compared with the typical age of 30 for adopted people.

Mary Clear, 50, says: "I finally received a copy of my files after many years of negotiations involving the organisation Liberty and a law centre. Although significant chunks of the files have been removed, they contained years of correspondence from my mother to social workers, MPs, priests and the police. If I'd known about that correspondence before she died, I would have been able to talk about it with her. It's too late now."

The report recommends that information about people who have spent time in care should be exempt from data protection legislation. Currently, councils interpret the act in different ways, creating a postcode lottery. Some refuse to hand over a school report or psychologist's comments because they are written by a third party who they can't locate to get permission. Many refuse to hand over information where, say, a parent is dead, because they can't get clearance.

Lack of guidance

Social services are often frustrated by the lack of clear guidance on what they can and cannot release. Julie Cookson, access to records officer for social services at Wirral metropolitan borough council, says: "I'm working on a case at the moment, where I'm having to blank out so much information that I'm not sure I'll be able to give any meaningful information to the woman in question."

The good news is that pockets of excellent practice do exist in some local authorities and voluntary agencies that hold records. Sue Porter, 57, says the support she received in accessing her files from the Children's Society was second to none. "I had immediate acknowledgment of my request, and when they found the information, I was counselled through it, and offered help to search for my siblings who I didn't know existed. Nothing was withheld and I felt respected throughout. I've found an identity, a family. It's completely changed my life for the better."

Meanwhile, despite official complaints to local government ombudsmen, Wood is still waiting.

· A Childhood on Paper: Accessing Care Records Under the Data Protection Act 1998 is available from Monday.

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