National Confidential Forum: reflections on participant experiences

The National Confidential Forum is an acknowledgement forum established to capture and communicate the experiences of people in residential/institutional care in Scotland. People provide the Forum with accounts of their childhood experience of care and its longer term impact on their lives. We have heard from more than 150 people of all ages so far and with an analysis of 52 recent testimonies now complete, emerging findings are being prepared for Scottish Government. In practice, testimonies provided to the Forum encapsulate people's personal histories and all stages of care: before, during and after - sometimes long after, allowing us to investigate the legacy effects of care. In this early paper, the role and function of the Forum is explained in union with an exploration of participants' reasons for attending a hearing, and their experiences and benefits of speaking with us.