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Resources
The MIRRA project is creating a number of resources to support the rights of care leavers, and to help social care practitioners, information professionals and academic researchers fulfil their duties and responsibilities. You can download them from this page, or access them via the links.
- Podcast
Miriam Antcliffe, Research in Practice Research and Development Officer, speaks to John-george and Darren who share their personal stories of accessing their care files as adults in this podcast
- Project Leaflets
MIRRA Research Leaflet: Description and Actions
- Case Studies
- Film
- MIRRA children’s diary app specification
MIRRA children’s diary app specification facilitates more participatory recordkeeping by providing a platform for young people in care to contribute to their own care record. The specification is published on Open Access on a Creative Commons licence:
Shepherd, Elizabeth, Sexton, Anna, Lomas, Elizabeth, Williams, Peter, Denton, Mark, & Marchant, Tanya. (2021). MIRRA app SRS: Memory – Identity – Rights in Records – Access Research Project: a participatory recordkeeping application Software Requirements Specification (SRS). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5599430
- Research Symposium
All of the presentations from our symposium on 18th July 2019 were filmed and can be found on YouTube via the link below.
Symposium Presentations playlist.
- Research Impact case study
Elizabeth Shepherd talks about the MIRRA research project in a UCL research impact and enterprise video.
Where research transforms access to children’s social care records: Hear how UCL research led by care experienced people has restored children’s voices to official records of their time in care REF podcast https://soundcloud.com/uclsound/where-research-transforms-access-to-childrens-social-care-records?utm_source=www.ucl.ac.uk&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fuclsound%252Fwhere-research-transforms-access-to-childrens-social-care-records
#MadeAtUCL, which showcases the ground-breaking research of UCL staff and students, exploring ‘How Data Moves’.
- Family Connect website
FamilyConnect helps adults who have been adopted or in care find answers to questions about their origins. MIRRA has been working with Family Connect, who have been fantastic in supporting our work.
- Publications
Hoyle, V., Shepherd, E., Flinn, A. and Lomas, E (2019) “Child Social-Care Recording and the Information Rights of Care-Experienced People: A Recordkeeping Perspective” in the The British Journal of Social Work https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcy115 (Open Access – Free to All)
Shepherd, E., Hoyle, V., Lomas, E., Flinn, A., Sexton, A. (2020). Towards a Human-Centred Participatory Approach to Child Social Care Recordkeeping. Archival Science. 20(4), 307-325. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10502-020-09338-9 Gold Open Access.
Hoyle V, Shepherd E, Lomas E, Flinn A (2020). Recordkeeping and the life-long memory and identity needs of care-experienced children and young people. Child and Family Social Work. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12778 Gold Open Access.
Lomas, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Shepherd, Victoria Hoyle, Anna Sexton, and Andrew Flinn. 2022. “A Framework for Person-Centred Recordkeeping Drawn through the Lens of Out-of-Home Child-Care Contexts”. Archivaria 94 (December), 64-93. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13865. This article drew on a more detailed RecordkeepingFramework_Toolkit evolved as part of the MIRRA project.
- Policy Briefings and Outcome links
The project produced a number of briefings that were targeted to ensure developments from critical leaders and regulators in this space. The briefings are made publicly available:
ICO July 2019: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/mirra/files/2025/09/ICOBriefingPaper_July2019.pdf
ICO are moving towards a more person centred approach and guidance on handling care experienced people’s requests through data protection. In addition, they are regulating to ensure the protection of care experienced people’s data.
IICSA August 2019: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/mirra/files/2025/09/OfstedBriefingPaperFeb2021.pdf
TNA April 2020: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/mirra/files/2025/09/TNABriefingPaper_April2020.pdf
TNA have provided leadership support in this space and this has led to follow up work with the Archives and Records Association, the Chief Archivists in Local Government Group and the Information and Records Management Society. Further information on practice based workstreams following this is below.
Ofsted February 2021: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/mirra/files/2025/09/IICSABriefingPaper_MIRRA_UCL_August2019-1.pdf
Ofsted invited the MIRRA team to talk to their inspectors. We continue to seek to work with them to ensure they oversee recordkeeping requirements as part of their inspection regimes.
- Practice based guidance
The Archives and Records Association, the Chief Archivists in Local Government Group and the Information and Records Management Society have been working with the MIRRA research group to develop practice based interventions.
The following guidance was launched at a Parliamentary event in 2024:
Links to the further research and Welsh versions can be found here.
https://www.archives.org.uk/care-and-adoption-records
Ongoing workstreams in production are:
- a best practice retention schedule
- a process for case management systems
- a database to enable care experienced people to search for their records
- a storytelling app to enable children in care to capture their own experiences and life stories.
BASW have produced social work guidance informed by the MIRRA project on better recording in case files: https://basw.co.uk/policy-and-practice/resources/recording-childrens-social-work-guide
- Raw data
Anonymised interview transcripts from the first phase of MIRRA can be found on the UCL Data Repository:
https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/dataset/MIRRA_Interviews/16622947
- Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
MIRRA is helping UCL to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreement
