How we protect your story.

Your Story Matters was created by Barry McKenzie, an adoptive father who lived through the system he now documents. It started from his own experience of being heard but not understood.

To make the human cost of decisions, delays and policies visible. Systems record what happened. Your Story Matters records what it cost — in sleep, education, work, family life and trust — so that lived experience sits alongside the official numbers.

Yes. Your Story Matters is independent. It is not funded by, or answerable to, the services, local authorities or organisations whose decisions it documents. It exists for the people who use services, not the people who run them.

That depends on the choices you make. A private Impact Receipt is only visible to you. A story you choose to share publicly appears on the Story Map and in Lived Evidence, shown the way you previewed it. You decide what is public and what stays private.

Only what you choose to share publicly, and only what you can see in the preview before you submit — your story as you wrote it, the impact categories you picked, the service or system, your approximate location (county and country only), and your name only if you chose not to be anonymous. Your account details, email and private receipts are never public.

Yes. Anonymous is the default. You never have to give your name, and your exact location is never collected or shown. Many people share entirely anonymously.

Yes. You can delete a story or a receipt at any time, and you can delete your whole account. When you delete something, it is removed and no longer visible.

Your private receipts are used to document your own experience. If you give consent, anonymised details from your story can be combined with others to show patterns across many experiences. Nothing is used to identify you personally in those patterns.

No. Your information is never sold. It is not shared with advertisers, brokers or data brokers. Aggregated, anonymised patterns may be shared with organisations to inform change — but only in a form that cannot identify you, and only where you consented to aggregation.

Statistics are produced by counting anonymised responses from people who explicitly consented to aggregation. They reflect the people who chose to contribute — they are not representative of everyone. We always show the numbers behind a statistic and label small samples honestly. See the Methodology page for how the evidence is built.

An Impact Receipt is built from what you enter — the time period, the decisions, and the impact you describe. Estimates are conservative by design and are based on research, statutory frameworks and lived-experience data. The receipt documents your experience; it does not claim to be an independent assessment. See the Methodology page for the detail.

Your Story Matters captures what people experienced, not a formal investigation. Submissions are voluntary and self-selected, so they do not represent every family. Patterns can highlight where systems may be falling short, but they should not be read as independently verified findings of fact. We say this plainly, on the evidence and on every pattern.

No. Impact Receipts are evidence-documentation tools, not legal advice. They can support a complaint, tribunal or letter, but they do not replace a qualified legal professional. Always seek qualified legal counsel before formal proceedings.

If something worries you — about a story, your data, or how the platform is working — please say so. You can message Barry directly and in private through the Contact page. Concerns are taken seriously and handled personally.

You can message Barry McKenzie directly through the Contact page. It is a private line — whether it is feedback, a question, or your story, nothing there is public.