Paperwork retention after a child leaves...

QUESTION: What happens to paperwork when a child leaves?

ANSWER: The retention of information relating to children is covered by our registration with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO – www.ico.gov.uk) as data handlers. Data Protection law is changing next year to more robustly cover information held on paper as well as online: all childminders should be registered with ICO as data handlers.

When a child leaves the provision, records relating to children’s learning and development must be handed over to parents in a timely way (don’t hang onto them and don’t photocopy them). This includes photos of the child unless you have specific written permission to retain them –
Confusion over rules for photographs | Nursery World.

Parents can change their minds about photo retention at any time and you must take reasonable steps to comply with their wishes. For example, if you have kept photos of a child on your Facebook page after a child has left (with written permission) and parents change their mind and ask you to take them off then you must remove them.

Note that if you hold information about children or families on a computer you need to consider how you will continue to keep it safe as technology changes and securely delete it when the child leaves the provision.

Some Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) state that a copy of the 2 year progress check should be retained because it is a statutory document – you will need to check locally because this is not covered in the EYFS statutory framework or by any other DfE documentation.

Childminders need to keep information about children relating to the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the EYFS until the child is 21 years 3 months old for insurance purposes – this is generally accepted to include accident, first aid and injury forms, medication forms, physical intervention records, safeguarding information, contracts, permission forms and attendance registers etc.

Some LSCBs state that safeguarding information must be retained until the child is 25 – however, as childminders are normally only covered by insurance until the child is 21 years 3 months old this should be questioned.

Some LSCBs state that serious safeguarding documentation must be handed over to the child’s next setting when the child moves on – the LSCB should provide a form which is signed by the next setting to confirm transfer of safeguarding records: check their website for information.

The retention of records relating to HMRC is detailed here (section 3) - Business records if you're self-employed - GOV.UK.
To comply with the Data Protection Act you should inform parents about what information is retained about them and their child when you hand them notice or gave them a termination letter. Parents generally have a legal right to know what is in their child's file and what information you are going to keep about their child and for how long (see EYFS 2017 – page 32 – footnote 55) - https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...EWORK_2017.pdf.
 
I hope this clarifies :)

What happens if a child sadly dies before they reach age 21 years 3 months? Would you still keep their paperwork? I'm assuming not.

I've been sorting through my paperwork recently and have a lot of stuff from when I started over 21 years ago. We didn't keep the same records then as we do now, and we weren't told we had to keep it all, so it's a bit hit and miss what I've actually got. The first few children I looked after are now over 21 so I have shredded anything relating to them. But I do have paperwork relating to a child who would now have been 19 if they had lived. I couldn't quite bring myself to shred their documents but guess that I probably could do now.