The Royal Commission found that many survivors had difficulty accessing their records. The issues included lengthy delays; or getting incomplete or heavily redacted information.
Over the last couple of year, the Crown Response Unit and Archives New Zealand worked together on five initiatives to make it easier for survivors of abuse to access their personal records while they were in care. Initiatives 1-3 were led by the Crown Response Unit and 4-5 by Archives New Zealand.
The principles are on how agencies and non-state organisations could:
Shared redaction guidance has been developed for agencies and non-State organisations to improve consistency when making redactions to records to be provided to individuals. The goal is to improve a person’s access to their own information, while being clear when information has been redacted to protect other’s privacy.
The shared redaction guidance has been updated [DOCX, 187 KB] in response to the High Court’s decision in H v Attorney-General [2024]. New guidance has been developed [DOCX, 189 KB] to help agencies identify whether a specific court order has been made restricting access to a document.
Online information has also been developed(external link) explaining the records and redactions process.
Organisations that have already indicated their intention to use the shared redaction guidance include:
Setting up a central website for survivors, care-experienced people, their whānau and support people that would provide:
The website would not provide direct access to the records themselves and would not contain people’s personal records.
The Survivor Experiences Service can now help survivors request, receive and understand their care records. Visit the Survivor Experiences Service(external link) for information.
Archives NZ has published the scope and definition of care records to help the government and other organisations know which records are valuable for those in care and should be protected until a wider decision is made about:
You can find the scope and definition here: The care records definition(external link) (archives.govt.nz)
The Chief Archivist has issued a temporary care records protection instruction(external link) to protect care records while work is undertaken to review the retention and disposal of State care records.
This replaces the previous broad disposal moratorium aimed at protecting records for the Abuse in Care Royal Commission's investigations.
The instruction:
This action will not impact your ability to access your own records. As a member of the public, you can continue to request your own records by approaching the relevant government agency.
This work involves increasing cataloguing and indexing of care records already held at Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand(external link) so records holders can find personal information more easily when someone asks for it.
