Archives and the Rights of the Child Research Program

Children who experience Out-of-Home Care need quality recordkeeping systems to develop and nurture their sense of identity and connectedness to family and community. They’re also required to account for their care experiences and prevent, detect, report, investigate and act against child abuse.

Those involved in providing care services and supporting children experiencing family dislocation require access to efficient, effective and responsive information systems – driven by quality recordkeeping – to ensure the highest standards and continuity of care. The need for such systems does not disappear when a child leaves care.

Many inquiries, including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012-2017), have emphasised the lifelong importance of these records. In inquiry after inquiry, testimony after testimony, those caught up in child welfare and protection systems as children (Stolen Generations, former child migrants, Forgotten Australians, care leavers) have highlighted how difficult it is to find and access records of care experiences in:

the search for identity and memory
(re)connecting with family
holding the system accountable for decisions and their consequences
seeking redress for abuse and neglect.

The program builds on the pioneering research of the 2004-2008 ARC Linkage Trust and Technology Project and 2008-2010 ARC Linkage Who am I? Project.

It integrates participatory research and design methodologies to develop recordkeeping and archiving systems in which multiple rights in records are recognised, respected and enacted.

Research activities

Established through an ARC Future Fellowship, this project gathers researchers across a range of disciplines together with community and practice advocates to re-imagine recordkeeping and archiving systems in support of responsive, accountable and child-centred Out-of-Home Care – and to enable social and historical justice.

Real-time Rights-based Recordkeeping Governance for Childhood Out-of-Home Care, ARC Discovery Project (2020-2022)
Recordkeeping and its governance is a significant problem for the care sector, which affects the social, emotional and psychological health and wellbeing of children, young people and adults with childhood care experiences.
Individuals with care experiences often speak of having to fight for their rights, or of having strong advocates making sure that their best interests are at the forefront of decision-making in a fractured, fragmented and under-resourced system.
Existing reactive governance mechanisms – retrospective file audits and inquiries by Children’s Commissioners/Guardians or other authorities in response to complaints, catastrophic failings or other systemic concerns – often fall short of ensuring those rights.
This upcoming research aims to advance our understanding of the frameworks needed to govern recordkeeping and rights in care systems. It will:
- Explicate and model participatory recordkeeping governance from integrated legal, recordkeeping and digital systems perspectives at many levels – from the individual to the organisational to the systems-wide – in real-time.
- Break new ground in building an informed base for innovative rights-based reforms to relevant information and recordkeeping law, policy and technical capabilities and systems.
Real-time Rights-based Recordkeeping Governance for Childhood Out-of-Home Care is funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant DP200100017.
Chief Investigators
- Associate Professor Joanne Evans (Monash University)
- Professor Moira Paterson (Monash University)
- Associate Professor Melissa Castan (Monash University)
- Professor Elizabeth Shepherd, University College London
Connecting the Disconnected: Co-Designing Integrated and Inclusive Recordkeeping and Archival Networks, ARC Future Fellowship (2015-2018)
Through this ARC Future Fellowship, Associate Professor Joanne Evans explored the development of a participatory design methodology to overcome the myriad of disconnects in existing archival and recordkeeping frameworks, processes and systems.
It investigated ways in which digital and networking capabilities, rich recordkeeping metadata and the expertise of impacted communities can be harnessed to develop systems configured around community information, self-knowledge and memory needs – and contribute to transformative changes in archival access and other recordkeeping services.
A key part of the Fellowship has been the establishment of the Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child Initiative in partnership with key community advocacy organisations and allied research units:
- Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN)
- The Child Migrants Trust
- Connecting Home
- CREATE Foundation
- Federation University Australia’s Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH)
- The University of Melbourne’s eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC).
On 8 and 9 May,2017, the Initiative convened a National Summit at Federation Square in Melbourne. It gathered a range of stakeholders 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.
With the insight, learnings, new connections and strengthened relationships developed over the two days, participants resolved to develop and advocate for a unified, collaborative and strategic approach to address the recordkeeping and archiving challenges. The result was an outline of the National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care, along with an action, advocacy and research and development agenda for its design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Connecting the Disconnected: Co-Designing Integrated and Inclusive Recordkeeping and Archival Networks is funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant FT140100073.
Rights in Records by Design, ARC Discovery Project (2017-2020)
This project brings together a transdisciplinary team to investigate the design and development of recordkeeping infrastructure that’s capable of proactive, transparent accountability to the principles of provision, protection and participation in the best interests of the child – as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Operating across Monash University and Federation University Australia, the research involves a number of interconnected strands of investigation to define and operationalise recordkeeping rights. These include:
- Developing a Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care.
- Co-designing a prototype of a distributed and participatory recordkeeping infrastructure for those with care experiences to enact these rights.
- Exploring the embedding of the principles of the Charter into the practice of a contemporary children’s care organisation.
Rights in Records by Design is funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant DP170100198.
Chief Investigators
- Associate Professor Joanne Evans (Monash University)
- Associate Professor Jacqueline Wilson (Federation University)
- Emeritus Professor Sue McKemmish (Monash University)
- Associate Professor Philip Mendes (Monash University)
- Professor Keir Reeves (Federation University)
- Dr Jane Bone (Monash University)
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Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation

Archives and the Rights of the Child Research Program

Research activities

Real-time Rights-based Recordkeeping Governance for Childhood Out-of-Home Care, ARC Discovery Project (2020-2022)

Chief Investigators

Connecting the Disconnected: Co-Designing Integrated and Inclusive Recordkeeping and Archival Networks, ARC Future Fellowship (2015-2018)

Rights in Records by Design, ARC Discovery Project (2017-2020)

Chief Investigators