  A direct search for the Standard Model Higgs boson decaying to a pair of
charm quarks is presented. Associated production of the Higgs and $Z$ bosons,
in the decay mode $ZH\rightarrow \ell^+ \ell^- c \bar{c}$ is studied. A dataset
with an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ of $pp$ collisions at
$\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC is used. The
$H\rightarrow c\bar{c}$ signature is identified using charm-tagging algorithms.
The observed (expected) upper limit on $\sigma(pp \rightarrow ZH) \times
\mathcal{B}(H \rightarrow c\bar{c})$ is 2.7 ($3.9^{+2.1}_{-1.1}$) pb at the 95%
confidence level for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, while the Standard Model
value is 26 fb.
