Consultancy brief: To address the long-term preservation of children’s records currently held in ‘line of business’ applications
Consultancy brief
To address the long-term preservation of children’s records currently held in ‘line of business’ applications.
Information is provided below or can be downloaded in a PDF here.
Introduction – Archives and Records Association (ARA)
ARA is the lead professional body for archivists, archive conservators and records managers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The ARA aims to support its membership through training, continuous professional development, identification of employment opportunities, professional help and advice, and by providing a community to which the membership can belong and from which they draw benefit through open discussion and debate, as well as through gathering of information and advice. Our strategic aims and further information about ARA is available in full on our website www.archives.org.uk
In 2024, an ARA working group on records of adopted and care experienced people led by the Chief Archivists in Local Government Group published guidance: Care and Adoption Records — Archives & Records Association[i]. This builds on the research of the MIRRA project at University College London (Memory – Identity – Rights in Records – Access)[ii] and on the digital preservation reports of Archives First[iii]. The working group is now working closely in association with the Information and Records Management Society[iv], Archives and Records Council Wales[v] and includes Dr Julia Feast OBE, an independent social work consultant. It continues to work with the MIRRA team too and is grateful for funding from The National Archives’ research and innovation fund and partner organisations.
The ARA working group now wishes to address the issue of exporting adoption and care records from line of business systems for long-term preservation.
The problem:
a) Adoption and care records are held in Line of Business (LOB) relational databases and it is not always easy or possible to extract information for various purposes including subject access requests, details of a child moving from one authority to another, long-term digital preservation.
b) Timely and straight-forward deletions in line with retention schedules is sometimes challenging. An adult social care case study in West Sussex illustrates this.
c) Records with very long retention periods (in this case 75,100, 125, 150 years) – ‘case file’ data at risk every time a new system is procured (probably at least 10 times during the lifetime of the personal data).
d) This problem is not restricted to children’s records. It also impacts on adult social care and other ‘line of business’ databases holding records which need to be held beyond the normal lifetime of the database.
e) New applications such as Storyteller that centre the child in creating records will also benefit from a set of design recommendations for enabling similar extraction of information to ensure long term digital preservation is built in ‘by design’.
The solution: Information professionals able to extract AIPS (archival information packages) from LOB systems into secure long-term digital preservation solution.
Aims and Objectives
This tender is to commission the drawing up of a specification to extract children’s records from ‘line of business’ applications into a digital preservation solution, thus addressing the long-term preservation of relevant records. It is hoped that this will provide a model for extracting information from other ‘line of business’ systems.
The consultant will:
Work with members of the CALGG working party and their colleagues from Dorset, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and West Sussex to:
a) Draw up a model specification of an AIP or AIPs for adopted and care-experienced people’s ‘case files’
b) Specify system agnostic mandatory functional requirements to be included in future social care and adoption procurement exercises
c) Draw up a model Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
d) Draw up a checklist to offer to inspection regimes (such as Ofsted) to demonstrate compliance with statutory requirements for the long-term preservation of these records
e) Draw up a next-steps document for working with the key social care systems suppliers to create AIPs then test export of dummy data.
Further detail of requirements from the consultant are outlined in appendix 1.
Outside scope: Specifying requirements for long-term preservation system to preserve AIPs.
Methodology
Please tell us in your proposal what your methodology will be including research methods and how any working/steering group will be involved in the work.
Product
The consultant will provide a written report covering the requirements set out in Appendix 1.
Costs
The budget for this project is £20,000 excluding VAT. Please provide a budget with your tender, stating inclusive or net of VAT.
Timetable
Please include a project timetable with key milestones in your proposal
Liability Insurance
Please include a copy of your professional liability cover with the proposal.
Contractor Personnel
Please include in your proposal details of who would be working on the project with a clear indication of who will be leading.
Monitoring
This project will be managed by ARA’s care and adoption records working party, led by Sam Johnston, County Archivist of Dorset.
Quotations and timings
Completed proposals should be sent by e-mail to John Chambers, Chief Executive, Archives and Records Association, john.chambers@archives.org.uk and Sam Johnston, County Archivist of Dorset and chair of ARA’s care and adoption records working party, sam.johnston@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk by 12 noon on 14th January 2026.
Interviews will be held week commencing 26th January 2026.
The appointed consultant is expected to complete the project by 31st December 2026. An initial report will be required by the Welsh Government by 31st March 2026.
For an informal discussion contact Heather Forbes, Head of Archives Service in Gloucestershire and member of ARA’s care and adoption records working party. heather.forbes@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Appendix 1: Requirements from the consultant
The overall aim of this project is to specify what an AIP (or AIPs) look/s like for the ‘case files’ of adopted and care experienced people, to create a standardised requirement and produce a document so that the specification can be tested with the three key system suppliers.
To achieve this the consultant (in association with colleagues from four local authorities) will need to:
a) Identify any related work being undertaken in this area, for linking/collaboration opportunities
b) liaise with social workers and adoption practitioners to understand what they need.
i. To reproduce a case file (as existed with paper record
ii. To understand requirements for pre- and post- commencement adoption records and any legal requirements (e.g. the legal requirement for no linkage between the pre-and post-adoption commencement information, and that different sections of ‘the file’ are held distinctly in accordance with who needs to see the information)
iii. To understand what is required if the client moves from one authority to another (potentially with a different ICT system).
iv. Consult with information asset owners of social care systems to investigate what form of information they would require if their system ‘went down’ and they could only rely on what we have extracted
v. To analyse procedures and requirements from at least two different councils/regional adoption agencies to understand nature of AIP/s required.
c) liaise with information governance workers who deal with SARs and Adoption Agency requests for information to understand their likely requirements
d) liaise with adopted/care experienced people to understand their requirements
e) reconstruct a case file that can be printed out as an AIP e.g. PDF or another format which is human-readable. Collate otherwise disparate transaction processing data – ie a completed case file that meets the requirements of a) to d) above.
f) conclude which information the AIP or AIPs include/exclude. Identify the ‘single version of the truth’ for preservation, which may be more than one AIP for reasons set out in bii) above.
g) refer to revised retention schedules recently commissioned by the working group in drawing up recommendations for AIPs.
h) ensure the completed case file or AIP is capable of being exported from the LOB system in a form that does not require any further access to the system to interpret it.
i) to understand and recommend timescales for extracting AIPs from the LOB system. With a 10-year procurement cycle, we can’t wait for 125 or 150 years – the currently recommended retention period. Is the obvious time when information is no longer added to the file? Or a combination of this and when the system is reprocured? Or should periodic snapshots be taken? The export process should be used routinely to export data that is no longer operational.
j) In view of heightened sensitivity of this data, consider security/encryption/Data Protection/AI implications. Councils are likely to have different approaches to confidentiality/encryption due to different levels of risk appetite – so options laying out risks should be provided.
k) draw up a system agnostic specification (both LOB and digital preservation solution ends).
l) document a compelling argument about why implementing this work is necessary/desirable. Include references to Data Protection legislation/lawful basis/archiving in the public interest.
m) draw up a model Data Protection Impact Assessment – to aid adoption of this project’s recommendation in local authorities.
n) draw up a draft checklist to offer to inspection regimes (such as Ofsted) to demonstrate compliance with statutory requirements for long-term preservation of these records
o) draw up a document to use test or dummy data from suppliers of three key systems to test proof of concept.
Out of scope
a) how information professionals will import the AIPS into their digital preservation systems/solutions ensuring appropriate and robust security measures are in place. Information professionals will also need to address governance arrangements, and ensure data is secure, closed, findable with appropriate human and machine produced metadata, and that redundancy arrangements are in place if their digital preservation solution fails.
Appendix 2: Key stakeholders
Key stakeholders besides information professionals
a) Adopted and care experienced people are key consultees in this project.
b) Social workers and adoption practitioners, Caldicott Guardians and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. Information asset owners of social care and adoption systems who commission social care and adoption line of business systems.
c) The regulators, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofsted, who oversee implementation of legislation.
d) System suppliers (for phase 2). Currently 3 major players identified (Liquid Logic, Mosaic and OLM/Eclipse)[vi]. We are also having productive discussions with Aftercloud about their new Storyteller product for children in care.
END NOTES/FURTHER INFORMATION
[i] https://www.archives.org.uk/care-and-adoption-records
[ii] MIRRA was instrumental in identifying longer-term preservation issues as a major barrier to the provision of person-centred recordkeeping approach in children’s social care contexts. Specifically the MIRRA record keeping principles advocate that preservation measures should be in place that ensure records of personal and emotional value will be accessible and readable for at least 200 years; that digital records should be stored safely and securely in preservation formats, being integrated out of proprietary systems once they are no longer in active use; and that organisations should have a policy and clearly defined processes for archiving records for permanent preservation, taking into account their enduring value for the descendants of care-experienced people and for historical and social science researchers. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/mirra/about/ and https://www.ucl.ac.uk/impact/case-studies/2022/apr/transforming-access-childrens-social-care-records-England
[iii] Archives First research projects in 2017 and 2020 (led by Viv Cothey and Cassandra Pickavance and involving members of the current working party). The two projects set out the thinking about what is required for digital preservation and why. https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/media/18083/201709-archivesfirst-digital-preservation-final-report.pdf and https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/media/2094490/digital-preservation-for-local-authorities.pdf
[iv] The IRMS is the foremost association for information professionals and students, supporting and bringing together all those working in information governance, records management, data protection, information security and more, across all industry sectors, in the UK and beyond.
[v] ARCW is a representative body for institutions and organisations all over Wales involved in caring for archives.
[vi] From gov.uk procurement website – 3 market leaders
Liquid Logic: https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/989003999633905
OLM/Eclipse: https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/758776386100329