This page provides guidance to support people who are either:
- searching for personal information on time spent in care in Scotland as a child
- considering applying to Scotland’s Redress Scheme
You can read more about Scotland’s Redress Scheme on mygov.scot.
Records we hold relating to time in care
We hold the Scottish national archives. Its holdings include high level policy and strategic information produced by Government about the direction of the care service across the whole country, but not individual care records.
We also have custody of:
- historical inspection reports about schools and children’s homes
- historical court records.
We do not actively seek to collect records of former care organisations, though we do hold a small number of such collections.
More detailed information on the records we hold is provided in the NRS Research Guide: Records for time spent in care.
Where to find care home or school records
A number of different voluntary, faith-based or local authority run organisations provided care for children over the years.
Sometimes this involved a group living setting or a child being ‘fostered’ or ‘boarded out’ to a family. It might be called:
- a children’s home
- a residential school
- a List D school
- Borstal
- approved school
- secure unit
Sometimes the same establishment, or home, could be run by different organisations over time.
Some of those establishments and organisations no longer exist. Children could sometimes move across a number of establishments over many years. Some care settings existed over decades but changed hands - it can understandably be confusing for those seeking records.
Records of care homes and schools, where they have survived, are likely to be held either by:
- the institution itself or the organisation that ran it, if these still exist
- the local authority archives of a council if it was responsible for the home or school
We recommend that you get in touch with the local authority archive service using the contact details provided in The National Archives’ directory of archives.
Care home or school records we hold
We hold some records for:
- Children First, formerly the Royal Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC)
- Dean and Cauvin Young People's Trust
- Dr Guthrie’s Schools, Edinburgh
We also hold inspection reports for care homes and approved/List D schools. The reports focus on the quality of education provision, school management and other operational matters, but will occasionally refer to an individual in the care of the establishment.
Where to find different types of records
Where to find social work records
Social work records, where they have survived, should be held by the relevant local authority.
A local authority may have a record showing you spent time in care as a child, even if:
- they did not run the home that you stayed in
- they moved you to different area
This is also true for those who were not in residential care, but might have been part of the foster care system as again the local authority would have managed that provision.
You should contact the local authority to ask for their help in finding and accessing your information. You could do this through the local Social Services Department, but you might also want to speak to the local authority archivists who are often best placed to know the extent of the records held by the authority. See The National Archives’ directory of archives for contact details.
Where to find records of Borstals and Young Offenders Institutions
NRS holds a small number of registers and volumes which have survived for Borstals and Young Offenders Institutions.
For details of these and other related prison records NRS holds see section 4 of the NRS Research Guide: Records for time spent in care.
Other records may be held by the Scottish Prison Service.
Information you can find in court records
If you were sent to an approved/List D school or a Borstal/Young Offenders Institution there may be a court record of this. Juvenile courts, held at sheriff courts, existed up until April 1971, when they were replaced by children’s hearings. From April 1971 onwards, court records include applications and appeals relating to children’s hearings. These are known as social work court records as they were made under the Social Work (Scotland) Act.
Adult court records can also contain evidence of your time in an approved/List D school or a Borstal/Young Offenders Institution.
Divorce records can include mention of you and any time living outside the family home if you were under 16 at the time of your parents’ divorce.
See section 5 of the NRS Research Guide: Records for time spent in care for further guidance about court records.
Information needed to request record searches
Most of the records NRS holds are not indexed by the names of individuals. Therefore some basic information is needed to enable effective searches to be carried out.
For example, to search for care home or school records, it’s helpful to know:
- full name of the establishment
- county
- date/year when admitted
- how long you were there
- address when you were admitted
To search for court records you’ll need:
- name or location of court
- date/year placed in care
Make a request for personal information held by NRS
Requests for your personal information can be made by completing and sending our subject access request form for time in care records. You do not have to use this form, but it should make it easier for us to process your request. In order to ensure that you are the data subject of the information you have requested, you will also need to send us proof of your identity. Further details are provided on the subject access request form. See also our requesting Information page for information on how to make other types of requests.
Please note that a separate application process must be followed to request a certificate (or official extract) of your personal information in the statutory birth, marriage, adoption, divorce, civil partnership and dissolution registers. For more information see our order a certificate page.
