Care Leavers' Association

The CLA has recently updated its guide to accessing childhood care records. The aim of the guide is to help care leavers who are trying to gain access to their files from their time in care. It explains what the law says about accessing files of these kind, what you are entitled to see, what you are not and what to do if you think your request has not been dealt with properly.

Hopefully, the new guide will be more reader-friendly and easier to follow but we would like your feedback on that. We want to make the guide as helpful and easy to understand as possible, so it is important that you tell us what you think.

You can download a copy of the guide from the website here: ATR Guide

Let us know your thoughts.

On Sunday 16th November 2009, Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd,  delivered an apology to the child migrants and thousands of Australian orphans who were abused in care in Australia as children.

It was also announced by the British Government that Gordon Brown would apologise for the programmes that sent hundreds of thousands of British children to Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth nations.

 Read more about this story here: Australian Apology

The Care Leavers Association is calling for Gordon Brown to extend his New Year apology and to offer an apology to all care leavers who experienced abuse while in care in the UK. We believe that there is a need for an independent inquiry so that, like Australia, the UK can acknowledge and offer an apology for the events that took place.

Tell us your thoughts on this subject. You can also vote in our poll about whether the British Government should offer an apology, here: Poll