This is an interim commentary. I want to add more to it when I have time.
One of the things keeping me busy over the past several years is linking into and keeping up with Care Leavers organisations in other countries. There’s a great deal of interest in sharing experiences across the world.
For a number of years, I have been linked into a network of people interested mainly in national inquiries and redress schemes. Led by Professor Johanna Skold of Linkoping University in Sweden, it had members in a number of European countries, UK and Ireland, North America, New Zealand and Australia.
The UK and Ireland have always had active advocates and researchers in Care Leaver matters. One newish one is an Alliance of Care Experienced People in Higher Education who support each other navigate the rarefied institutions in post-secondary education where Care Leavers are still a very small minority group. You can find the website of the Alliance here
This year with international travel being just a dream, I have taken part in a number of online discussion sessions. One was with a group of people in Ireland looking at national inquiries and redress. In May and June this year I contributed to sessions with Care Leavers in South America on the topics of
(a) how you set up a Care Leavers advocacy and support network and
(b) how to achieve a national inquiry.
Some great ideas flowed back and forth.
Global Records Access Information Exchange
Under that title, there have been two long but very productive workshops with people all around Australia linking up with counterparts in Scotland where lots of activity is occurring around redress. The workshops focussed on record making, record keeping, and access to records. What have we learned for the mistakes of the past? What can we do better these days? Is to too late for older Care Leavers to repair the damage of lost, missing, inaccurate and misleading records?
We can offer a lot from our experience, but new faces bring new ideas to us too. Physical difference separates and hampers our interaction, but there’s still plenty to be gained by talking to each other by ZOOM or TEAMS.
In my next post I’ll publish the notes and some of the slides I used in my presentation to this Exchange.