When Systems Become Barriers | Bridge to Justice

Access to Health Records: When Families Are Left Searching for Answers

By Bridge Carter Bridge to Justice

When someone dies, families are often left with questions.

Sometimes those questions are simply part of the grieving process.

Sometimes they are much more difficult.

Was Mum really capable of making those decisions?

Why was Dad suddenly isolated from his family?

Who made those financial decisions?

Were safeguarding concerns ever raised?

Did professionals notice something that nobody else did?

The answers to many of those questions may already exist within health and care records.

Yet for many families, obtaining those records becomes a battle in itself.

The Law Was Created to Help

Both the UK and the Isle of Man have legislation that allows access to certain health records after a person’s death in appropriate circumstances. Although the legislation differs slightly between jurisdictions, the underlying principle is similar.

The legislation recognises that there are occasions when access to records is both lawful and necessary.

This may include personal representatives administering an estate and individuals who may have a claim arising from the deceased person’s death.

The legislation was never intended to create an impossible hurdle for families seeking legitimate answers.

The Reality

Increasingly, Bridge to Justice is seeing something different.

Families tell us they are repeatedly being asked to prove why records are relevant before they are allowed to see them.

Responses often include phrases such as:

“The records are not relevant.”

“You will need a court order.”

“You have not demonstrated sufficient necessity.”

“The records fall outside the relevant period.”

Whilst organisations are absolutely right to protect confidential information and comply with the law, there is a growing concern that some requests are being interpreted so narrowly that the wider purpose of the legislation is being lost.

A Circular Problem

One of the greatest difficulties families face is this.

They are told they must demonstrate why records are relevant.

Yet the very records they are trying to access may contain the evidence that demonstrates exactly that.

It creates a circular process.

The records are withheld because relevance has not been shown.

Relevance cannot be fully demonstrated because the records remain inaccessible.

The result is delay, frustration and uncertainty.

Looking Beyond One Date

Another common issue is the tendency to focus upon one event in isolation.

For example, if a family dispute concerns a Will signed in July 2020, some organisations may ask whether records from 2021 or 2022 are relevant to that single date.

That may appear logical at first glance.

However, safeguarding investigations rarely work that way.

Patterns of abuse are seldom identified by looking at one isolated event.

They emerge through chronology.

A person’s deterioration, dependency, vulnerability, relationships, communications, safeguarding concerns and professional observations often develop over many months or years.

Understanding that wider context may be essential.

Why Care Records Matter

Care home records are not simply daily notes about medication or meals.

They may contain information about:

changes in cognition;
vulnerability;
expressions of wishes;
family relationships;
safeguarding concerns;
professional observations;
emotional wellbeing;
dependency;
contact with relatives;
restrictions placed upon visitors;
discussions with other professionals; and
concerns expressed by the individual themselves.

Viewed individually, those entries may appear routine.

Viewed together, they may reveal a pattern that was never recognised at the time.

Safeguarding Is About Patterns

Bridge to Justice has worked with families where no single organisation held the full picture.

One agency held health records.

Another held safeguarding information.

Another held financial information.

Another held police records.

Each organisation considered only the small part it possessed.

Nobody stepped back to examine the cumulative evidence.

That is often where safeguarding fails.

Protecting Privacy and Finding the Truth

This is not an argument for unrestricted disclosure.

Privacy matters.

Confidentiality matters.

Third-party information should be protected where the law requires.

Redaction has an important role to play.

The question is not whether organisations should protect confidential information.

The question is whether legitimate requests are sometimes being interpreted so narrowly that families are prevented from understanding what happened to those they loved.

Why This Matters

Where concerns exist about:

coercive or controlling behaviour;
financial abuse;
undue influence;
safeguarding;
mental capacity;
neglect;
professional decision-making; or
systemic failure,

health and care records may form an essential part of the evidential picture.

They should not automatically be viewed through the lens of one isolated legal issue whilst overlooking the wider context.

A Better Way Forward

Bridge to Justice believes organisations should consider requests by asking:

What is the wider context?
What is the applicant actually trying to establish?
Could the requested records reasonably assist in answering those questions?
Can disclosure be achieved through proportionate disclosure and appropriate redaction?

Those questions promote both transparency and confidentiality.

They are not mutually exclusive.

How Bridge to Justice Can Help

Bridge to Justice specialises in complex cases involving:

safeguarding;
coercive control;
financial abuse;
elder abuse;
probate concerns;
mental capacity;
systemic failure; and
professional accountability.

We help individuals and families by:

reviewing the complete chronology rather than isolated events;
identifying patterns across multiple organisations;
preparing independent Threshold Assessment Reports;
producing structured Companion Assessments tailored to individual organisations;
supporting requests for health and care records;
preparing evidence bundles for regulators, safeguarding boards, police and courts; and
helping families understand what practical options may be available when requests are refused.

Many people come to us believing they have dozens of unrelated problems.

In reality, they often have one connected story that no one has yet taken the time to assemble.

That’s where we can help.

Final Thoughts

Justice rarely depends upon a single document.

It depends upon understanding the full picture.

When access to relevant information becomes unnecessarily difficult, it is not only families who suffer.

Confidence in safeguarding, transparency and public accountability suffers too.

The law should never become a barrier to understanding the truth.

It should help people find it.

Bridge to Justice

We build the full picture. Reports authorities can’t ignore.

The legal framework exists

This is not a gap in law.

There is legislation in place, including:

Mental Capacity Act 2005
Care Act 2014
Serious Crime Act 2015 (coercive control)
Domestic Abuse Act 2021

These frameworks recognise:

vulnerability
undue influence
coercive control
financial abuse

The issue is not absence of law.

It is failure to apply it properly in real-world situations.

Why statistics don’t reflect reality

Official figures suggest these cases are rare.

They are not.

They are simply not recognised.

When cases are:

reframed as family disputes
filtered through high prosecution thresholds
closed without full investigation

They never enter the statistics.

Low numbers do not mean low occurrence.

They reflect a system that does not capture what it is seeing.

This is not just about families

There is a common assumption that abuse in these cases is purely domestic.

It is not.

Patterns emerge involving:

professionals
institutions
care environments
financial systems

In some cases, individuals are not just failed by the system.

They are actively let down by it.

Where this leaves people now

For those affected, the situation does not end.

It continues:

financially
emotionally
physically

People are left:

funding their own fight for answers
managing the impact on their health
carrying the consequences of decisions they did not make

All while trying to seek accountability from the same systems that failed them.

The reality

This is not one case.

It is not a rare failure.

It is a systemic issue.

The pattern is clear:

risk identified
risk minimised
action not taken
harm occurs
accountability avoided

The question that remains

If the system can see the signs and still does not act

what is it designed to do?

How Bridge to Justice Can Help

At Bridge to Justice, we work with individuals and families who have experienced exactly these patterns.

Situations where:

concerns were raised but not acted upon
abuse was reframed as a family dispute
professionals relied on each other’s conclusions
and the bigger picture was never properly seen

We do not replace the police, lawyers or safeguarding teams.

We do something different.

We help make sense of what has happened.