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.

CRB checks are free of charge for voluntary work, so I see no valid reason why they shouldn't be done.

Itsnearlysummer - I think you are missing the point . If someone has offered to make cups of tea / unlock a hall / bake some cakes for an nct group that she is part of and is then told that she has to go on a course to be trained in how to spot child abuse she will say,' Oh well I won't bother then I just wanted to help out a bit.'
You are also missing the point that nct volunteers are part of the group - they aren't in some way 'above' the rest or in a position of responsibilty / authority over the rest of the group, they are just one of a bunch of women (or men).
If one of the mothers in a group says 'next week I'll do xxx' the correct answer is 'Thank you' not 'Go on a course first'. .

The check itself may be free of charge but either an organisation has to register as a CRB "registered body" at a cost of £300 with a further £5 charge for every countersignatory. This means that eithr people would have to send original documents such s their psasport to NCT UK Office or every branch pay to have their own countersignatories and as we have already said the is would have to be done probably at least once a year per branch as volunteers move on.

Otherwise they can pay a registered body to carry out the checks for them. Registered bodis charge an admin fee per check of around £30.

Ok fair enough qwepoi, tbf, I've never been to a NCT meeting so have no idea what they're like!

If it's 'just' mums who are also members of the group, then totally agree with you.

I just assumed it was run by outside volunteers, ie. the way surestart playgroups are, e.g. not by people who are also accessing them.

"If one of the mothers in a group says 'next week I'll do xxx' the correct answer is 'Thank you' not 'Go on a course first'. " Fair enough! Although as someone who loves courses (especially if I get a certificate at the end of it!!), I'd jump at the chance!

When I ran an NCT group the ruke was that there had to be ne official paid up NCT member present in order for the insurance to be valid but that member need not be in charge as such. It really was just mums who went along and one of them would volunteer to sort out the coffee rota.

OK Leicestershiregirl here is a nice easy example. A first-time mother of a 6m old baby has just separated from her partner. She feels guilty and ashamed about the relationship breakdown and her family are unsupportive. Often she feels tearful and even despairing and she is shattered because her baby still wakes frequently at night. She knows that she is beginning to become seriously depressed, but she has heard horror stories that if she tells her GP or health visitor she is mentally ill they will notify social services who will see that she has no help at home and remove her child. She feels frightened and anxious.

She pitches up at an NCT group (or on Mumsnet) and begins to get to know some other local parents. They share how tired and anxious they feel sometimes. One of them talks about having PND. Another mentions that her HV was really constructive and non-judgemental when she spoke to her. So this mother decides that maybe seeking professional help is less daunting and attends her local clinic.

If NCT took on a more formal safeguarding role and became known for having trained volunteers who might take it upon themselves to take concerns about other parents further then this woman would not turn up in the first place.

There is a role for a sliding scale of formality in children's services. Informal services may actually provide a useful gateway to accessing support.

I know a fair amount about this subject. I used to work in the voluntary sector with children with disabilites, am now a law academic, I've been involved in delivering safeguarding training unfortunately I think a lot of what goes by the name of safeguarding training is a pile of cock.

So now I've given you a nice concrete example of the kind of harm I think might result from what you propose why don't you return the favour and explain what kind of harm you think could be averted by giving people running baby and toddler groups safeguarding training.

And Victoria Climbie is a lousy example to use. In her case there were no shortage of professionals making referrals to social services, she was assessed by social services, the assessment was of a poor quality and because the relatively new social worker who carried it out was not being effectively supervised because her manager was incompetent nobody in the chain of command spotted how badly her case was being handled. More people making more low-level referrals would not have altered this.

Incidentally the link above with CRB prices on are out of date.

Standard checks no longer exist, I think they were abolished about 2 years ago they are just enhanced checks now. ISA never came in the coalition decided not to go ahead with the scheme.

I think OP has now left the thread, making it quite clear that nothing we have said can make any difference to her opinion!

Ah well, it was an interesting discussion.

I quite like the suggestion that I may have been brainwashed by a cult after pitching up at Bumps and Babes a few times! They lure you in with their Nearly New Sales and before you know it you've been programmed to blindly defend the NCT against all critics. One of my friends is on the local NCT committee, I must ask her is they all have to perform sexual favours for the chair or incur her wrath.

[makes the NCT special sign to VeronicaCake, one sock up and one sock down]

I worked as an NCT volunteer co-ordinating the local branch Bump & Babies : all the mums and babies in the group used to meet up in each others houses once a week for 2 years. I think it was before CRB checks existed. I have also worked in 3 (private) schools (my daughter was a pupil at each) on the fund-raising committees, organising and working at the events. None asked for CRB checks. In fact the headmistress of my dd's previous school was interviewed and broadcast by our local BBC tv station, speaking out against over-zealous CRB checking on the grounds that no volunteer in the school was ever left alone with any children and it puts people off volunteering. Michael Morpurgo famously said he wouldn't continue his programme of talking about literature to schoolchildren on school premises if he had to be CRB checked.

The only time I've been CRB checked was when I worked for an insurance company because the FSA rules require it (to see if you've committed any financial crimes like fraud etc).

allows volunteers to keep a responsible eye on both service users and each other I'd hate to live in your little world LG where we all "keep an eye on one another". Look out for one another maybe but you are coming across a bit like the worst kind of parenting police.

The important thing is to strike a balance. Being in care is cr*p, even nowadays, and putting children into Care for inappropriate reasons is really, really bad for all concerned. I haven't forgotten Cleveland.

I am chairperson of my local NCT branch. This is a topic that we discuss often, and review often. We do not require volunteers to be CRB checked, as they are never in a sitiuation where they are alone with a child without one of its parents or a a guardian of some sort.

P.S. No, I never got sexual favours from anybody, unfortunately :)

leicestershiregirl Thu 08-Sep-11 10:09:23

"VeronicaCake, what you've said is incoherent. If parents have "perfectly sensible concerns" then they shouldn't have a problem raising them, should they? The concern is either sensible or it isn't. Again, if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to worry about."

What world are you living in? Not the one in which I raised perfectly sensible concerns about my dd's weightbearing and was suspected of child abuse by a trained professional. Yes, we were eventually exonerated (undiagnosed medical condition), but dd is still having counselling and prone to self-harming; she struggles at school because she feels if she tells adults she is in pain they might report us again. The one thing that kept me sane during those difficult times was that I had friends I could rant to without fear of them reporting me. The kind of friends you find at groups like the NCT.

As for the recruiting of volunteers, I can understand that that might be a problem for groups like yours that recruit in this way. But a blanket requirement would totally undermine the kind of group found in our local area which are just very informal gatherings run by mums for mums.

I've worked as a TA and a teacher, also as a nanny and in playgroups, and this has involved sometimes being alone with children. Some of this was before the CRB culture/ practice came into existence. But anyway in the voluntary work I've done with the NCT, such as hosting coffee mornings for a group of new Mums I probably haven't been on my own with babies or children.
(But it would be OK if I was because I'm not going to hurt them anyway.)
I've had "sole charge" of babies and children since I was a teenager and started baby-sitting for neighbours.
I guess I do think the CRB check is only of limited use in preventing abuse.
I think other practices such as taking references and reducing the opportunities for abuse, such as by good team work, may be at least as effective.

There are actually rules about when you can require someone to have a CRB check. It is illegal to require someone to undergo a CRB check if they don't meet the criteria. It's entirely possible that NCT volunteers would not meet the criteria so the NCT couldn't insist they have a check. They could ask if they'd be willing to, but they couldn't insist. It's a while since I gave myself a headache trying to argue with a client about this point so I can't remember exactly what the rules are. But they are routinely misused.

Having worked for a small charity I know how much admin time CRB checks take up and how easily they can end up being a box ticking exercise. My own CRB check took literally months to sort out because the CRB people couldn't comprehend the fact that my home country has no postcode system.

I have read this entire thread, took me some time and interesting debate.

Leicestershiregirl I wanted to ask you a few questions.

1. Do you genuinely think CRB checks would make a difference here. The points I have taken on board from other posters are:
   a) the children are never left alone
   b) CRB checks only identify the small majority of offenders (child abusers) that have been caught
   c) child abuse/ abduction etc is most likely to be committed by a family member so v low risk in the situation you are talking about

2. Do you agree with cost benefit type approach that has been taken here by the NCT, i.e. measured risk, the benefit of undertaking this is very unlikely to have any impact, this is the way any organisation has to assess whether it is worth spending money on something, especially a charity that has limited funds. A slightly facetious example but NCT still deem it acceptable to serve hot drinks at their meetings when I would have thought there is a risk of burns etc to small children, a number of mum and baby groups I went to stopped serving hot drinks for this reason (PLEASE NOTE this is not my view but just an example). Also if it is a choice to spend money on CRB or promoting the organisation they presumably feel that there will be more benefit from the public becoming aware of the NCT and the help and support it could give than from a potentially non risk of dangers from non CRB checked volunteers - this is about a choice in how to spend the money.

The training you mention does seem a good idea and maybe you would be better off pushing that further.

As another poster said earlier up, you cannot prevent every single case of child cruelty via training and checks etc, there will always be tragic cases that slip through the net and I have to say I think the choice the NCT have made in this instance as to how to spend their funds is correct.

That said if another poster is correct and CRB checks are FREE for volunteers (I don't know if this is correct or not) I can't see why the NCT would be averse to taking advantage of this for appropriate volunteers (e.g. BF counsellers etc)....(not that I am of the opinion that they are needed in this case).

Finally you did post in AIBU saying you were canvassing opinion, and having seen that the overwhelming majority agree with the NCT that checks aren't needed does that not make you question your original stance or did you have no intention of taking on board other opinions?