Your records may have been:
If an organisation cannot provide you copies of your records, they need to tell you. Under the Privacy Act you have the right to know why.
Learn about the common reasons why you might receive less information than you expected.
If the organisation cannot provide records about you, it might be helpful to look for historical information about the place where you were in the guardianship or care of others.
These could include newspaper articles, photographs, books and audio histories.
For example, you could try looking on the Archives New Zealandopen_in_new websiteopen_in_new or the National Libraryopen_in_new website.
You could also try requesting records that other organisations might have about you.
For example, if the organisation that made decisions about where you lived and who you lived with no longer exists, your records might be somewhere else.
Or, more than one organisation may have been responsible for decisions made about you, so you may be able to get different records from more than one organisation.
You can get support to help you figure out which other organisations might have records about you. We have some suggestions about where you might find support.
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This Easy Read is about why you did not get any records you asked for from the time you were in the care or guardianship of others.
Here records means the information an organisation has kept / made about a person.
Here in care means when an organisation is put in charge of a person and decides things like:
A guardian is an adult put in charge of the care of a person.
A guardian should:
When you ask for your records you may be told that there are no records to send to you.
This may be because the records were:
Here destroyed means:
Redact means hiding / taking out some information in a document.
This could be because there is information about other people in your records.
This is often done with a thick black line.
Click here to learn more about redactions
You should be given the records you asked for unless there is a good reason not to.
If an organisation cannot give you a copy of your records they need to tell you why.
There are some reasons an organisation may not give you information you have asked for.
These reasons are set out in the Privacy Act.
The Privacy Act tells organisations how information must be:
Click here for more reasons why an organisation may not give you the information you have asked for
If you are finding it hard to find your records you could try looking in some other places.
You can find the information you want in old records from the place you were in the:
or
You may be able to find the information you want in things like old:
This information may be on the Archives New Zealand website at:
www.natlib.govt.nz
Archives New Zealand takes care of government information about things like:
This website is not in Easy Read.
It can be hard to find out which organisation has your records.
An organisation that made decisions about your care may have shut down.
This may mean your records were given to another organisation.
1 or more organisations may have made decisions about you your care.
You can ask each organisation about records they may have about you.
Click here to find the organisation that has your records
The organisations may also give you a summary of redacted information.
Here a summary tells you the main ideas about the redacted information.
You can make a complaint to an organisation if you are unhappy about how some information was redacted.
You can contact the Privacy Commissioner if you are unhappy with what an organisation has said about your records.
There are some reasons an organisation may not be able to give you the information asked for.
Click here to learn more about making a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner
Trying to get your records about when you were in care can make you feel lots of things.
It can be good to have someone to talk to about it.
You can talk to your:
Click here for more information on where to get support you if you want to talk about how it feels to get your records
This webpage is not in Easy Read.
Click here to download the information on this webpage as a PDF.
More Easy Read information is available.
Click here to visit our Easy Read library webpage.
Click here to learn about who made this Easy Read.