To think this is why more parents don’t volunteer

[Hoppinggreen]

So DH has been asked by a teacher (via DS) to help with a certain after school club where he has expertise. He is happy to do it and will finish work early that day to do it. So far so good BUT Aibu to think that the hoops he has to jump through to do it are a bit ott?
Firstly he has had to fill in a 10 page document, then he has to have a DBS, then he has to complete an online safeguarding course, attend an induction in School and present 2 forms of ID “to make sure he is who he says he is”
DH works on a govt contract and has high level security and 2 current DBS certs ( one less than 6 months old). We have also had children at the school for the past 8 years and I am well known to the school as well ( for the right reasons!). He has volunteered there before but as it was over 12 months ago he has to do all this for 1 hour once a week where he will be accompanied by a teacher anyway.
He works full time, some times with long hours and is a highly paid expert in this subject - if I hadn’t offered to sort most of this out for him I doubt he would be bothering
So Aibu to think this is a bit excessive? What do other schools do?
I know that safeguarding is important but all this will tell them is that he has no convictions, nothing else.

*Gamerwidow.
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The email is not for a renewal of a
DBS its a renewal of a subscription to the update service.

You had to subscribe to the update service within a specific time period after receiving your DBS certificate.

There is not time period specified to renew a DBS , every organisation will vary. Most head towards a three year renewal.

Using the update service for a lot of big organisations, especially involving volunteers, is often not viable.

The DBS update service has a poor uptake. That's because DBS never promoted properly and thought of the implications for big organisations.

Organisations also do not have to accept a DBS from somewhere else so the thought that DBS is portable is not always valid.

The portability is the big issue here. In Victoria Au, there is the Working With Children certificate, which lasts for three years ( I know, I know) and is widely accepted for school purposes for non-teaching staff.

We were led to believe at their roll out that DBS would be portable, but sadly this isn't the case. It would make the whole thing more sensible.

We expect application forms, but follow Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance and only do a DBS if it is "regulated activity", know they may be unsupervised times or we have a concern (red flag mentioned in a previous post).

numbkinuts thanks for explaining.

It's hoop but a fairly ineffective one at that. The local Gymnastics teacher had his DBS upto date - they also found 3000+ child pornographic images on his computer. I don't claim to have the answer but the hoops don't work either.

Seems OTT to me and not what any of the schools I work in or have experience of do. Some of it, yes, but not all that. I wonder if they've had an issue in the past and now trying to cover themselves in the future.

It's increasingly difficult to get volunteers into schools, especially men. Being ott wont help, that's obvious for all the see.

We need some form of joined up register that covers all people with a dbs and the likes. It's unnecessary to need a new one for every single place - it'd save a fortune and time if we could have a central online record which centres could access, which could be updated online, etc.

It seems OTT if he's going to be accompanied by a full time member of teaching staff at all times anyway? I can understand the dbs check, but as others have said it's only as good as the day as it's issued. I think the safeguarding thing is daft if a teacher is there, I agree for a volunteer role it is off putting. I volunteer for a local youth group and recently there has been a whole load more "risk assessment" forms involved along with SEN training, safeguarding, first aid, you name it. I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing, but like your DH, I work full time and I'm not getting paid and I genuinely am thinking of giving it up as the hoops are getting bigger, more frequent and more complicated and ultimately more time consuming. The only reason I haven't is I think the club might fold and a lot of kids will ultimately lose out. I don't know what the answer is though.

The Protection of Freedom Act and Human Rights Act prevents a blanket approach to DBS checking.

There are many restrictions on who can be checked and it is dependent whether they are working/ volunteering with adults or children.

People , including sex offenders and those that harm and are unsuitable to work with the vulnerable in our society have rights - whether we agree with that or not.

I think the OP's husband has been asked to volunteer at Prince George's school, hence the belt and braces approach to safeguarding.

I said it earlier but again - the problem isn't DBS really, it's the safeguarding courses that I think are a massive barrier to volunteering.

I've done then twice for a long term volunteer position I have and they are a stupid waste of time and money. You could just give people half an a4 sheet of text to read as that is about the amount of information that is actually in one. Some people are asking a killing delivering safeguarding training and I am sure they are the ones telling schools or charities " ooh you really must do mandatory safeguarding training or you might be in trouble".

If I want to help with a two day event this summer for teens getting to experience a few days at uni and some career based activities, I will need to waste another afternoon doing a stupid course. This is the main reason I have not volunteered and they are now desperately short of volunteers and may not be able to run the event but I am already giving up two days, and I don't really one to give up another weekend day to schlep across London to a waste of time course.

Safeguarding training is absolute nonsense for most volunteers. It boils down to "anything seen a bit off or a vulnerable person say something a bit weird, tell a professional member of staff immediately and do not attempt to engage the child on the issue any further yourself". Also "don't contact a child outside of this volunteering programme or allow them to add you on social media. Again tell a professional staff member immediately if they do"

You don't need - nor do these mandatory courses provide - a professional level of safeguarding training.

They manage to drag those two key points out over a whole afternoon usually with some godawful role play exercise and seems to be based on the assumption everyone is a complete idiot.

References, DBS etc is just admin and once you've done it once, you have the paperwork to hand to complete again easily. But mandatory training doesn't work like that.

Agree re the safeguarding courses, totally mind numbing time tension stuff.
And DBS yes, as long as you are signed up to regular updates. But references, have to be follows up each time. It’s not just a case of reproducing a five year or ten year old letter, you’ve got to follow up and politely ask those contacts. That you might not have seen in a while...and oh, it’s not for some lucrative high flying career move. It’s so I can help do the photocopying at my kids school.. Not everybody has a vast array of current professional contacts on standby..let alone those willing to vouch for your kid ability factor!

I work in school and have never filled in a 10 page doc. Got to be sure with DBS specific to the school and role these days to be safe make money for the dbs. I do think it's a bit much asking a parent to run an after school club though.

‘But he won’t even be alone with the children...’

It isn’t just about being alone with the children as it is unlike abuse will occur on the premises it is about someone having access to children and potentially grooming them for abuse at a later date. ‘Oh that is so-and-so I met him doing football at school’ so he must be ok.

The regulations around safeguarding are tightening all the time and the ethos about it being considered in everything is so important.

Re Ian Huntley there was a police checking system in place at the time but he slipped through it. The successor system, the CRB check, would also have come back clear.

I seem to remember something about one police force not sharing info with another. He had been in trouble beforehand but it had not come up on a search. Perhaps our government agencies should be more focused on sorting out their own shortcomings first to stop terrible crimes like his happening again.

banyan Exactly. The police here in the US are very strict about this. If there is a report made against someone it is recorded against that person and it follows them. The person isn't guilty because of the accusations but if there are additional reports in another state or county in the same state the police are able to more easily identify someone who is a risk to others.

It's been a system that has helped increase the number of rape and abuse convictions too.

Safeguarding training is absolute nonsense for most volunteers. It boils down to "anything seen a bit off or a vulnerable person say something a bit weird, tell a professional member of staff immediately and do not attempt to engage the child on the issue any further yourself

Just tell any old member of staff? Presumably they're all professional! That's it? It's worrying if that's all you were advised.

OP here, been away for the weekend and there are a lot more posts.
Just to address a few things

1. At no point did I say we would not do the paperwork ( although given that the portal keeps crashing it may take a while)
2. I do not think DH is too important to have to go through a process the same as anyone else
3. I am doing it for him because I’m not working at the moment and have lots of time, not because he thinks it’s “wifework”. I offered
4. I am not advocating we don’t check volunteers at school.
5. I was just musing that perhaps SOME people would be put off by the amount of paperwork involved

Also, Well done to the 2 posters who figured out that the whole point of the thread was to boast about how much DH earns, you rumbled me. I could have just said he earns loads or uploaded a bank statement but obviously a 7 page thread using on whether a certain system is a bit paperwork heavy was an easier option

As an ex teacher, I'm shocked to see some of the blasé attitudes to keeping children safe and the training for that.

I had to sit through hours of it. Yes, it was boring. Yes, I'd heard it the previous year, and the year before that, and the year before that. But I still thought it was the most important part of my job to listen to it and attend it. Because god forbid something happens... and it did happen at my previous school. The first thing people ask is 'Were the teachers involved trained? Did they follow the correct procedure? Was anyone else aware of safeguarding issues but did not report it?'

It's not just 'if you see something odd, make sure you mention it to someone'. It's 'This is OUR procedure. These are our SAFEGUARDING OFFICERS. If you see or hear anything, report it to the safeguarding officer, fill out a form, if necessary interview the child and write things down in their words'.

DBS checks are by no means perfect. They do not catch everyone who has a criminal history. But they go some way to protecting children from dangerous individuals and as a parent, I would damn well want it in place rather than not. It's not just paedophiles. Think violent criminal history too?

OP, as someone who has filled out multiple DBS forms, even if your DH has a DBS with his current job, he still needs a new one for that new organisation. I know it's time consuming and a pain in the arse but it's necessary. I can see how it might put someone off, but if that's the case then I'd say their desire to help children and be involved isn't that strong anyway. It's a standard procedure for every single school and youth organisation. Even though I'd been a teacher for 3 years, I still had to fill out a DBS for being an instructor in the Army Cadets.