The record of a child begins before the child can read it. The birth registration. The address of the household. The school enrolment. The medical records. The social photography of the family's events. The school's published lists of pupils, teams, and prizes. The directories of clubs and activities the child takes part in. Each is, individually, a routine entry. By the time the child reaches secondary school, the entries have accumulated into a substantial record that will continue to be consulted, in various ways, for the rest of the child's life.

For the children of a substantial family, the record is denser and reaches further. The press attention that follows the family extends to the children when they appear at family events. The aggregators that compile profiles of substantial families include the children as related entities. The school's published material reaches the wider press of the relevant kind of school. The activities the child takes part in, including sports, music, and youth philanthropy, generate records that are themselves indexed.

What follows is that the public identity of an adult child of a substantial family is, for the most part, already set by the time they are old enough to decide what they would like that identity to be. They can adjust it from there, but the foundation has already been laid by other people: parents, schools, photographers, journalists, and the family's own publicity choices in earlier years. The adult, in many cases, would like the foundation to have been laid differently.

the desk works with substantial families on the information that surrounds their children as part of the wider protection of the family unit. The work begins early in cases where the family decides to engage early; the foundation can be laid in a shape the family chooses rather than the shape it would otherwise take. In cases where the engagement is later, the work begins with mapping what is already in the record and addresses, through the proper channels, what can be addressed.

The work does not extend into the children's private lives, their personal relationships, or their accounts and credentials. The desk does not become involved in the children's daily activities, their education, or their development. The line is the same as elsewhere: the work is in the information that surrounds the family in the public layer, not in the private life within the household.

A fuller account is set out in the desk's work on protecting identity for private individuals and families.