A young person's documents are the files held on their record: things you upload — the LA's plans, letters, signed forms — and PDF exports ARC generates from records already in ARC.

Open the young person, then Documents from the Daily life & records area. Documents in the sidebar under File library shows the same documents across every young person in the home.

Visibility — read this before you upload

Every document is one of two things:

Standard — visible to everyone who can see the young person's record.
Private to Safeguarding Lead — visible only to the home's Designated Safeguarding Lead and to whoever uploaded it. Nobody else sees it in the list, and it 404s for them if they have the link.

Being a manager is not enough. The designation is what grants it. A manager who is not the DSL sees a private document only if they uploaded it themselves.

If you link a document to a safeguarding concern that is itself DSL-private, ARC makes the document private too, whatever you chose. You can link only to a concern you are allowed to see for this young person; otherwise ARC answers "Not found". A concern that is an allegation against a member of staff cannot be linked: "Documents cannot be linked to an allegation against a member of staff."

Upload a document

Select Upload document. The dialog is headed Upload Document. Fill in:

File — required. PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, PowerPoint, text, RTF, ODT, or an image (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, HEIC). Max size: 10MB.
Title — required.
Type — Safeguarding, Incident, Plan, Health, Legal, Other.
Visibility — Standard or Private to Safeguarding Lead.
Link to (optional) — Safeguarding Concern, Incident or Plan, plus that record's Entity ID.

Then Upload.

ARC stores the file under a name it generates itself, so an odd filename can't travel with the upload.

Generate an export

Generate export opens a dialog headed Generate Export. It builds a PDF from records already in ARC. Choose an Export Type:

Safeguarding Concern PDF
Safeguarding Chronology
Incident Report PDF
Care Plan Export

Save to Child Documents is ticked when the dialog opens. Leave it ticked to keep the PDF on the record; untick it and the PDF just downloads. Then select Generate.

The dialog does not ask which concern or incident. For a Safeguarding Concern PDF ARC uses the most recent concern for this young person that you are allowed to see, and for an Incident Report PDF the most recent incident. A Safeguarding Chronology covers the last twelve months. If there is no concern you can see, the concern PDF fails with "Not found", and if there is no incident ARC says "No incidents found for this child". A Care Plan Export uses the most recently updated approved Care Plan for the young person; with none, ARC says "No approved care plan found for this child".

A saved safeguarding export is filed as Private if it includes any DSL-private concern, and as Standard otherwise. ARC will not save an export containing an allegation against a member of staff to the documents; it says "An allegation against a member of staff cannot be saved to the child's documents. Download the PDF instead." Generating a safeguarding concern PDF or a chronology is also recorded on the safeguarding access trail as an export.

Exports respect your own visibility. A chronology you generate contains only the concerns you could already read, and ARC refuses outright if the range would have included DSL-private records that are not yours: "This export would include private safeguarding records that you do not have permission to view. Only the Designated Safeguarding Lead can generate this export."

A saved export is a snapshot. It does not update when the underlying records change.

Finding a document

Each document shows its title, Uploaded or Generated, Standard or Private, its type, who created it and when, with Download and Delete buttons. The Filters panel has Type, Source, Visibility, From, To, a Search title... box and Clear. Documents are listed twenty per page. With none, the page says "No documents. Upload a file or generate an export."

Deleting

Delete asks "Are you sure you want to delete this document?". It is allowed for the DSL and for whoever created the document; anyone else is refused with "You do not have permission to delete this document."

Deleting removes the stored file. The database row is kept as a soft delete, but the file itself is gone from ARC and cannot be recovered through the app. Treat Delete as permanent for the content, and use it only for genuine mistakes — a document uploaded to the wrong young person, or a duplicate.