They have in fact been keeping track of her nutrition and weight - they want her hungry enough that food is a compelling reward, but not malnourished enough to be in danger.

She has ever seen a doctor - it seems like she gets a fairly perfunctory and entirely nonmagical yearly checkup, which hasn't picked up on the heart problem or joint issues.

There are records of her having been drugged, restrained, and/or sent to seclusion for 'agitation' and 'noncompliance'. (Again, no mention of magic being used in any way.)

She was admitted to White Willow when she was five, with a diagnosis of... some word she's not familiar with... with intellectual disability.

Oh, is that why they're doing it wonderful.

And didn't care to pick up on anything else looks like. And yes they seem all around unwilling to pay mages to bother with their charges, here. Though at the least doesn't look like they were using any magic against the kids either. That's - nowhere near enough, but. Better than the alternative.

She pushes on her self to continue to do practical things rather than less useful things-in-the-genre-of-screaming.

And - if they don't even ward their medical records can she get any more less general-public-facing materials? 

Yep.

In fact it seems like they don't ward anything whatsoever.

Well, it's not like she has any good opinion of them to lose but she can think poorly of them in this area as well as think - horribly - of them in others.

Scrying, scrying. Anything more about Denice? About the 'Asylum' in general?

Admission records, financial records relating to her care, general notes about her behavior, logs of recreational activities (she watches a lot of TV, and is read to by one of the other children fairly often; she occasionally plays games or makes art, but not regularly; she doesn't seem to get much physical activity, or ever go outside), a few random notes about room changes and staff interactions and such; a detailed report of an incident some months ago where she successfully hid part of her lunch a few times, got staff to replace it, and passed the food along to another resident later. (She was, of course, punished when she was caught, and separated from the kid she'd helped.)

The asylum doesn't ward its own records, either, and keeps plenty of them. Anything Shen wants to look for is available; not just things relating to the children kept there, but staff records, payroll, administrative notes...

(Bless/goodness, Denice...) (She squeezes Shen's hand again.)

That is very bizarre. 

She restrains herself from beginning to form more theories; better to wait till she has more information about something like their government and such.

She will skim through for anything else that seems strongly or immediately relevant to information about Denice and what she might need, and note the rest to investigate later.

A list of dietary restrictions has her, and several other children, down as being on a finger-food diet; there's nothing else of particular interest.

Any indication if this is a punishment or manipulation type restriction, or something else?

None of the other things on the list seem to be punishments, at least to casual reading, and food-based rewards and punishments are listed elsewhere in her paperwork; it's probably something else.

Alright. (Well, of course they have a section for it...)

What else is on the list?

Food restrictions, mostly: some of the children are allergic to peanuts, or fish, or eggs, and there's a smattering of other allergies listed; some are on special diets, with the type of diet noted in the list and the diets' restrictions listed at the end; a few are on a type of restriction that's described with a word Denice doesn't know, which isn't explained.

Alright. She recalls the pencils; having thought of it takes another look at records for any other mention of related things. 

(She messages the updated food-needs information to Laeres.)

- yep, her motor skills are pretty bad. They've tried to work with her on it, but for this, at least, they didn't push when it didn't seem to help.

Well, preferable to the alternative. (She vaguely wonders how they make decisions about what to 'value' forced performance of; not that that's in any way of general high importance.)

Anything like metrics? And, any more things of similar sorts they should be keeping in mind?

She mostly has trouble with small things; she can hold thick crayons or markers but not regular ones, for example, though she's not very good with them in any case. The notes here also explain why she's on the finger food diet: she can't use utensils well enough to avoid making a mess, even if they're thickened so that she can hold them.

Heria pulls up where she can feed this into her datahook to get appropriate further product recommendations and the like. She doesn't suppose they tried any kinds of typing or other such things?

(And, how is Denice doing meanwhile?)

(Still watching TV, or possibly staring off into space in its general direction.)

They don't seem to have tried to get her to type at all; some of the exercises when they were trying to get her to be able to use writing implements involved tracing letters in their alphabet, but that wasn't a focus, most of them used shapes or simple drawings. When they tried to teach her to read, they didn't get that far; they started by trying to get her to identify letters by pointing, and according to their notes she wasn't able to do it reliably, even after several months of trying.

...not that it would not be more than understandable and legitimate to hide things from or deceive 'them' without any further reason, but do the records have anything that would be a more specific reason to hide reading abilities? Would showing them have been dangerous or led to negative consequences in some way?

Nothing obvious. Possibly there'd be something in one of the other kids' records.

She'll look at general records first - policies, scheduling...

They do demand more academic work of children who are more able to do it.

She's assuming even worse meanings to 'demand' than the general ones. Should she be reading the same into 'academic work'?

Not especially, actually. There are laws about what benchmarks children are expected to meet, when they can; they don't seem to care about surpassing that standard.