Voice, agency, and equity: deep community collaboration in record-keeping research

Introduction. This article presents the Rights in Records by Design project that seeks to address the structural, generational, and particularly egregious record-keeping issues associated with child protection and the out-of-home care sector. We provide various perspectives on our research approach that is geared to engage at individual, community, organisational and societal levels. Method. The participatory design and conduct of the project involves all members of the project. We focus on the close and continuous collaboration during all phases of this project by not only domain experts from various disciplines, but also advocates and community members from affected communities. Research participants are involved in all aspects of the conduct of research from planning to the communication of results. Results. We found that participatory and co-design approaches not only leads to richer knowledge generation and better design outcomes, but also to unexpected benefits resulting from the empowerment of participants. We also note difficulties in conducting participatory research within a traditional academic context. Conclusions. This project demonstrates the importance of being given voice and being heard. In many ways, this project has served to create an empowering space to explore how constructing and using 'your own knowledge' can lead to a wide variety of personal, community, and sector transformations.