to think the NCT should CRB check its volunteers?

[leicestershiregirl]

Just wanted to sound some mums out about this. Until last year I was a volunteer for the NCT and something that always bothered me about it was the fact that they don't CRB check their volunteers or require them to do safeguarding children training. This is in spite of the fact that volunteers are often in close proximity to children e.g. at mother and baby groups.

Comparable organisations e.g. Homestart, La Leche League and the Breastfeeding Network all require CRBs. Everybody working in a school or hospital requires one even if they don't have direct contact with students/patients. For my job with the NHS I also had to have safeguarding children training and we were told we have a duty of care to any children we come across, even if they are just visitors to the hospital.

This seems good and right to me, but when I brought it up with the NCT, first with other volunteers then with the Board of Trustees I was told NCT volunteers do not require CRB checks by law because they are never alone with children, they would be too expensive and they're not effective anyway because they can't tell you if somebody is going to commit a crime.

Am I alone in thinking this is absolutely crazy? Teaching assistants or Sure Start workers are never alone with children but they have to get checked, and rightly so - a school is not an appropriate place to work for somebody convicted of child abuse (and neither is an NCT mother and baby group). As for the expense, what is more important than child protection? And as for the argument they're not effective, that's just dumb.

Please tell me what you think.

I think YABU

as they are not on their own with kids, so minimal risk

i think that the NCT are right and i wish more organisations would follow their lead.

CRB checks are for people who work directly with children in loco parentis or who are in a position where the children concerned may come to trust them (e.g. a TA is never alone but is in a position to form trust with children which would make it very easy to entice a child away with them).

babies at NCT meetings are too young to form that kind of trust relationship with somebody they see once a week and are not left alone by their mothers either.

CRB checking is a big massive red herring and distraction from the actual risks.

On the other hand, i would have thought that some safeguarding children training might be beneficial to NCT volunteers (but maybe not compulsory).

It is sad Hester-and so silly-small DCs are very hands on.

I have stopped teaching now, but I always said that the day that I couldn't cuddle a weeping 5 yr old would be the day that I left. (that wasn't why I left-no one stopped me). There are times that you need to use your judgement and a cuddle is necessary.

Cory - I agree totally with you!

"Comparable organisations e.g. Homestart, La Leche League and the Breastfeeding Network all require CRBs."

LLL volunteers do not need a CRB check, don't know about BFN.

Of course NCT don't need to CRB check their volunteers - no volunteer is ever in a position where she is 'in charge' of a baby or a vulnerable adult.

Some NCT volunteers do get checked because they work under a SureStart/Childrens Centre and these places require one. But there is no reason for NCT (a charity) to pay for the checking of their volunteers - SureStart etc etc should pay.

CRB checking has all sorts of unwanted effects, without as far as I can see protecting children very well.

In addition, CRB checks also reveal previous convictions which are irrelevant and which may well belong in the past. If someone at (say) age 18 has a drugs conviction, or a shop lifting fine, is it anyone else's business 10 or 20 years later? Yet it will emerge with the fuller check - and this knowledge will prevent some people from putting themselves forward as volunteers, as they may not want others to know of their past.

People are still going on about the cost, as I said before CRBs are FREE for volunteers - see HERE if you don't believe me

"Fees
Both standard and enhanced checks require a fee but are free of charge to volunteers.
The fees to process criminal records checks are:
* Standard CRB check - £26
* Enhanced CRB check - £44
* ISA Adult First - £6"

(but as I said before they are overkill in this situation)

There is no guide to child protection for NCT volunteers. There is a policy which tells you who to report to if you have suspicions but there is zero guidance on what constitutes suspicious behaviour.

There are two issues here - CRB checks and safeguarding training. Of the two I agree that safeguarding training is more useful. With Local Safeguarding Children Boards it is free, takes 1 day and it is that that I think NCT volunteers should do - have done it myself - and it should be compulsory.

Wish people would read what I've actually written - the solicitor who said CRB checks would cost £42 a head is wrong, volunteers get them at a reduced rate, as I've already said. BfN does require a CRB, I know because I enquired about doing their training. My friend does LLL and needed a CRB.

Also whether or not volunteers should comfort crying children is a completely separate topic. (Seems to me quite obvious they should).

By the way, I've worked as a TA and you end up on your own with kids all the time because of the nature of the job but in theory you're not supposed to.

A number of people on here seem to be saying it's ok for government organisations to ask for CRBs but not charities. Why? If the government requires them charities should too. Don't charities have just as much of a moral duty to their service users? Why should they operate at a lower level?

As has been stated many times on this thread - a volunteer is never on their own with someone else's child. If we are to follow your line of thinking then if a volunteer at bumps and babies who is there to set up, make drinks and tidy up requires a CRB then so do all the other adults there surely?

And why stop there? They probably need a first aid certificate, food hygiene and HACCP while we are at it?

leicestershiregirl - it may be appropriate for govt and local authority orgs to require CRB checks because of the nature of the work that the volunteers do. Someone may be working as a SureStart volunteer, with her NCT volunteering hat on, but be required at some point to take reponsibility for a baby or vulnerable adult with her SureStart hat on. There may be a general 'cover your backside' policy for all, too.

In the normal course of NCT volunteering, there is no occasion where a volunteer would be with a mother and baby without the mother having responsibility for her baby.

What evil shenanigans do you imagine un-CRB checked volunteers could get up to? There is the outside chance that a BFC visiting someone at home could commit a property offence but you would have to be ever so peculiar to put yourself through years of training in order to one day have the opportunity of lifting a bit of Royal Doulton whilst purporting to help a new mother sort out breastfeeding. I suppose they might also want to perve over breasts but since NCT requires its BFCs to have bf-ing experience you'd think most of them could just look down their own tops.

The arguments about CRB checks in the public sector versus voluntary sector are all red herrings. Your argument only makes sense if you can suggest some concrete harm that could potentially occur and which might be averted if NCT carried out CRB checks on their volunteers. And that concrete harm must outweigh the significant benefits of self-organising and informal groups of parents getting together to make friends, share experiences or just silently weep because it is so long since any of them had any sleep.

There is no guide to child protection for NCT volunteers. There is a policy which tells you who to report to if you have suspicions but there is zero guidance on what constitutes suspicious behaviour. Guide/policy - same thing. There is no definitive guide to being a mum but there are laws and social protocols which mean I know not to be violent or abuse my child, that I should feed him, clothe him and make sure he is protected from danger. You don't need to go on a course or training to know what is suspicious for a volunteer job that brings you into contact with parents for very brief snap-shot of time.

I also think it's not the place of an NCT volunteer (who's job is let's face it, turn up on time, make sure everyone has a drink and chatting about babies) to be taking on a child protection role that extends beyond that which a person automatically assumes as a decent member of society. That's why there is a process to report suspicions to someone who is properly ttained who will evalulate the situation.

Once you start bringing in mandatory training and CRB checks you create something entirely different from the informal, friendly groups that have operated for years and years.

I think the NCT are being very sensible and practical. As was pointed out by a previous poster, if you base the argument on the fact that for five minutes you might be alone with someone's baby at a coffee morning, you WOULD have to CRB check the entire population. And as for the argument that NCT volunteers come into contact with vulnerable new parents / women suffering PND - these people are very often the volunteers themselves!

On the subject of NCT / CRB's, I used to volunteer for my local branch and one year I organised a Christmas party. I made a comment to my friend, also on the committee, before the meeting started, that someone would want the Father Christmas to be CRB checked. SHe thought this was absolutely ridiculous. Sure enough, we got to this discussion, and the first issue raised was whether the Santa should be CRB's

Also, if someone has been convincted of abusing a child, is it quite unlikely that they would have their children with them anyway?

For the first 18 months of DS's life he was exclusively cared for by two people who were not CRB checked. We are his parents.

He was also given a hug and a kiss the other evening by the checkout lady in the supermarket who is not CRB checked. Should I be insisting Waitrose give their staff CRB checks in case my toddler takes a shine to them?

Hmm it's quite clear that OP might be moaning that people havn't read her posts carefully, but has OP read any of the replies? Almost every single one says YABU yet we are obviously banging heads on proverbial brick wall...

I know several people who volunteer with LLL and none of them have needed CRB checks. I don't know why your friend needed one, perhaps it's for hospital visits.

YABU - a CRB check merely confirms someone isn't one of the around 1% of abusers who's been caught. So fairly pointless to start with. If the volunteer isn't going to be alone with a child, even more pointless.

I'm very hacked off with the system atm as despite me and other volunteer and our charity worker all having recent enhanced CRBs, we were recently not allowed to meet schoolkids, despite them all being 17, in a room with a door open, and a teacher present. As we found out after travelling there...
Even the worker was aghast at how paranoid this school was as they run similar projects in 50 other schools and while some haven't let us take kids off the premises, they've all been fine with meetings in the school!

The more bureaucracy, the fewer volunteer-run activities happen, which is more of a shame IMO. Even if CRB checks are 'free' for volunteers now, the time they take puts people off, someone has to process the paperwork, and the cost has to be borne somewhere - by taxpayers, presumably.

Close the NCT. Many problems solved :o

"But when you read in the newspapers about the tragic things that sometimes happen to children isn't that exactly what they are, highly improbable events? Yet you still think somebody somewhere should have prevented that."

Leicestershiregirl - I think that's the trap you are falling into - the belief that with the right systems in place, you can keep 100% of children 100% safe, all the time. The truth is that it's just not possible, so we need to concentrate on the most important risks and accept that accidents / bad things sometimes do happen, and that doesn't mean they always have to be someone's fault.

Life is a risk. The only way to stop it being a risk is keep your DC at home in a padded room-and even then an areoplane could crash it it! Parents have to risk access for themselves-not rely on bits of paper. They seem to have lost the ability. The chance of you crashing your car when out is high and yet people do it without thought-the chance of your DC being abused in a creche is miniscule-going to nil if you are there.

Have only briefly read through this thread but two things stand out - first the suggestion that a pregnant woman/new mother is vulnerable/impressionable etc. Seems like we are harking back to the dark ages of an assumption that expecting or new mothers are incapable of runnign their laves as they are "too hormonal". OP - do you want us all to give up work as soon as we see the blue line in case we get "taken advantage of" in our impressional state? Yes some mothers with PND may be more at risk but I can't see that this means that anyone coming into contact with them (such as the staff at Mothercare) needs to be CRB checked.

Secondly the safeguarding point - the NCT (I thought) supported parents - I saw a poster which said somethign about how new mums were welcome to attend an NCT coffee morning in their dressing gown with baby in a baby grow etc. I can't see how pushing the safeguarding angle will create a welcoming atmosphere where a new (or old :) ) parent will feel comfortable admitting that they are hating being a parent that day.

apparently some NCT volunteers also do not have the relevant SSI964H&S-Tea-making certificate which I think is shocking.

Incidently the argument that "it is worth it if one baby is saved" etc does not really work. If, for example, the government banned all parents from ever putting a baby into a car then more than one baby would be saved. They do not as it would be an impractical over reaction; just like CRB checking/safegurading training anyone likely to meet baby each day. Being an NCT volunteer is not that special - why not CRB check and train all new parents who like socialising as they are probably more likely to be left alone with a baby or form a bond with a vunerable adult than some poor, harrassed volunteer trying to rememebr who takes sugar, where they put the biscuits and make coffee for 14 people.

TAs are frequently left alone with children so CRB checks are vital.