I was taken into care when I was just two, but have never known the exact reasons why
It was in early 2020 that I received the first few fragments of my care records from my local council. They arrived in an email, with a secure link to a server where I could download a pdf of documents that had been collated, redacted and scanned. I often imagine that these documents were sitting in the forgotten basement of some council building in Guildford. Maybe a civil servant had to find a torch and descend a set of concrete steps into the dark, brush the cobwebs away from the cabinet and jimmy it open with a crowbar to undertake the labour of reading, sorting, censoring and digitising each page of information kept about me. If so, they might have been there a while. The collection of documents anatomising my state guardianship spanned more than two decades.
Even before I decided to ask for them, I knew that the files would be altered: the Information Governance department at Surrey county council, like all local councils, owes a duty of confidentiality to third parties. I knew that could include members of my biological family, social workers, teachers, foster carers, or foster siblings. I knew that I would be receiving mutated data: bits and pieces of stories, fragments of memories that had been taken apart and put back together.
