We have been told that 15 and 16 year olds cannot help the Woman's Institute wash up without every volunteer being police checked at a cost of over £30 for each CRB. Madness or what?

[seekinginspiration]

We have been told that 15 and 16 year olds cannot help the Woman's Institute wash up without every volunteer being police checked at a cost of over £30 for each CRB. Madness or what?

I've checked it out with the D of E people, and yes it is true. Britain has gone bonkers when our legislation will not allow older children to become socially responsible. At 15 and 16 children should be able to be trained to deal with life and hot water. I'd be gobsmacked, if any of the W.I or their husbands would flirt with a volunteer, but even if they did, Britain needs to get a grip. Don't moan about the lazy youth, STOP WRAPPING GOOD YOUNGSTERS UP IN COTTON WOOL... let them help.

BBC Saturday 21st June Anti-stab workshops for children, More than 10 teenagers have been stabbed to death in London this year. Children as young as 10 are taking lessons in how to avoid being stabbed. Specially adapted self-defence classes are being run by a martial arts school at All Souls Clubhouse in Camden, north London, for 10 to 16-year-olds. The workshops will teach youngsters how to deal with confrontations and advise them to run away from potential attackers or hand over their property.
A total of 16 teenagers have died as a result of violent crime in London since the beginning of the year.

And finally, since the check is prob about the same as a Data Protection request, why are they only a tenner and an Enhanced CRB £36?

SueW, your licence idea sounds sensible - the multiple application situation is obviously ludicrous, as is the situation whereby you can have your check then immediately be convicted of something, and unless you're in a highly regulated profession no-one's necessarily going to know.

However I don't think the stats would tell the full story - there will be many hidden instances where people haven't even applied for a job or volunteer role because they know the CRB check will rule them out.

How compulsory is the check, for things like this WI washing-up malarkey? Is it the organisation being extremely risk-averse in insisting on them, or are there rules/laws in place to say they must insist on the checks? When the whole system went into overdrive, post-Soham, I was allowed into a school to do paired numeracy without my CRB check being completed - the headmistress knew for sure via another route that neither I nor my fellow volunteers would have any criminal convictions, she was allowed to make that risk assessment and allow us in.

Hi not to be rude but I think people are getting a little confused with government guidance and employers/companies own policies perceptions of the law and guidance.

Under the DFES published document ?Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education? which came into force on the 1st January 2007 it is not a requirement for parents to get checked it is down to the Head of the school to make this decision in these instances. Governors and PTA members are normally recommended to be checked because they may have some level of control over functions in and around the school and where they are held.

Volunteers needing CRB checks do not Pay the CRB any fees for their checks, therefore if a volunteer does incur a charge then this is Registered Body or employer that is putting on an admin fee.

The CRB does not recommend anyone under the age of 16 having a CRB checks and if they are in secondary school and are going into a work placement with a nursery, a school or care setting with children or vulnerable people then again they do not require a CRB check.

If a child goes into a work experience placement then it is recommended to the school that one supervising person or Chaperone within that organisation has a CRB check carried out on them. Even if the chaperone is a paid individual, because the role they carrying out is a voluntary one for which they receive no extra money or benefit then they would also be classified as a volunteer, because they only require a CRB for a voluntary role of supporting a work experience student.

Some may think CRB are over the top, but to be honest its not them taking it the extremes because its more often than not employers who don?t understand or haven?t read the guidance and are therefore applying for inappropriate checks on their staff.

I think you will also find that the CRB or central government recently published that about 60,000-70,000 people have been denied employment with children or vulnerable people since the CRB began checking people. This is a small percentage compared to the millions of people that have been checked, but personally I feel a lot better knowing that the people that are looking after my kids at school and nursery have had these checks done and worry when like mad when they go on these field trips to help educate them and the people at the places they got to like activity centres aren?t required to have CRB checks.

If anyone has read the Bichard Enquiry and recommendations after the Soham murders, the one of the findings I think I recall was that people that are a danger to children and the vulnerable are applying for jobs within non regulated environments and in regulated environments in roles such as cleaners and gardeners. I?m not trying to say that we should automatically presume that everyone is a sex offender and it?s a sad state of affairs that we have to take these precautions, but quite frankly I don?t even want to contemplate the implications of not doing these checks, because I have a family and I cant even contemplate hearing about another Soham.

The new system is coming in August of 2009 with the full introduction of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, this scheme will run alongside the CRB and will mean anyone working in a regulated role or environment will need both a CRB and registration to this scheme. With the new system you will pay approx £62 and this will get you are CRB check and registration to the scheme which essentially means that you will be put onto an approved register with the ISA of people that can work with children or vulnerable people for the rest of your life.
With the new scheme employer will be informed if an employee commits an offence which then bars them from the list. You can register for only an ISA registration and don?t have to get another CRB check if you already have one, but the cost is the same and the CRB have to carry out all the checks again anyway.

After August next year if you take on new staff without them being on the new register it will be an offence and an employer could face a fine of up to £5000. The good thing though as I said is once someone is on the scheme they have a pin number so when a persons moves to a new employer they will give them their number and the employer can register their interest in employing the applicant online with the ISA and check if they are on the register and then in theory hire them straight away. #

This system looks to overcome the problem of someone needing a new CRB check for every job but I think the CRB stats are something like 60,000 people have been denied employment with employers since the CRB began and these were people that were not bared from working with children or vulnerable people but employers considered the offences were serious enough to deny employment and essentially the only way you will find this out is by doing a new CRB check. An example the ISA gave was if you have a school bus driver registered to the scheme and he is convicted of drink driving outside of work, then this will not ban him from working with children and the employer would not be informed.

On the last points raised above why is the prices different from a data protection request a CRB, well you are referring to subject access check which a company can charge you up to £10 for. An Enhanced disclosure carries out approx 104 checks, these include with DFES, PNC, NHS, Every local constabulary in the UK, ,military Police, Department of Transport, Northern Ireland Police, Scottish forces, Wales and many more. So in actual Fact £36 is not bad as to get a subject access check from 104 locations at £10 well I will let you do the Math.

Hope this helps, sorry if any of this is confusing.

Best place for more info on the new scheme is .isa-gov.org

Thanks for reading my comments.

That's all fine and dandy, but I don't want to be on an insecure government database thank you. The Government have signally failed to keep my personal details safe so far, and I can't see that this will be any better.

Having seen in the news this week that a lady was informed she had failed her crb check, and that the information the crb threw up was incorrect, and she now has to give her fingerprints to' clear' her record, I have doubts about the efficacy of those who work for the crb anyway.

Whilst I agree that there needs to be something in place to check teachers, social workers etc, I think the system has gone mad. Why does a mum need to be crb checked to escort her own son to school in a taxi? What will happen if that crb check is done incorrectly...take the child away from her?

There used to be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty; we now seem to be starting from a point of having to prove our innocence / disprove out guilt in order to contribute to our communities via volunteering or doing our jobs.

I completely understand where you are coming from and some of the points you have made. However I do feel like everyone that you have made the mistake of listening to the press on this.

On the point of the lady needing the CRB check, well the law says she doesn?t, therefore if either the Local council, school or taxi firm has requested one on her is not legal. This is because none of them employ her, nor are they making a recruitment decision and no parent is required to have a CRB check to look after their own kids. Therefore the fault in this situation lies with them and their ignorance to the rules and no one else.

With regard to the CRB making a mistake on an application, well yes this has happened and its has happened before and let me tell you why. When a check is done they check your records against a database of millions of people and use the information someone has provided to ensure they are who they say they are. But if there is someone on the Police Data Base with the same name and the same DOB and most of the information they have been provided matches then they have a duty or responsibility to say they think this is the person with the record and disclose this information. However every person has the right to dispute the information on the result. The employer shouldn?t have made a recruitment decision before the result has been received and once a result is disputed the employer is asked to reframing from making a recruitment decision until they can confirm 100% they have an accurate result. During this time the individual can seek compensation as to loss of earnings as a result and all of this information is provided in the result and in the information given by the CRB.

With regard to the finger prints and having to go to a police station to get your hand scanned in order to prove your not the same person. Well I can tell you I wouldn?t like to do this either, but if there is no other way to distinguish the applicant is a different person then what are they supposed to do.

The new data base will mean that people that are safe to work with children don?t need to go through all the haste and delay of applying for a new CRB check each time they want a new job or want to volunteer. It will therefore mean that only those people that respect their neighbours and our society and who apply to the law by not breaking it will be able to work with some of the most important people in it, our children and the vulnerable & elderly.

Yes we are innocent until proven guilty and I don?t really know how to respond to this other than by saying I wished we lived in a society where is was safe for everyone to leave their doors and windows open and let their kids play out by themselves all of the time. But sadly its not. It has been commented that the amount of abuse cases against children hasn?t increased over the last couple of decades, well if we didn?t have all these precautions and measures in place to protect them would the number of cases increased?

A lot of information has been lost and there is no excuse for this and like everyone else I know people that have been effected by this. But there are rules and procedures in place to protect our information and always have been and in each of the cases in the Press it has been individuals who have violated these rules that have lost our information and the government from what I have read and heard are changing and have dramatically changed already a lot of their systems to ensure no one else can make the same mistakes.

One last point, why is it that in some of the cases where the information has been lost that its not explained by the Press that no once could actually access the information if it was found because its encrypted and password protected and in some of the cases where the data was recovered or found why is it that the press haven?t gone out of their way to report this.

I?m not saying the system I think we have is perfect but these are my views.

thanks

Hi all,

seekinginspiration I'm intrigued by your tale. I'm a news reporter on a national newpaper and we're doing a story on the ludicrousness surrounding CRB checks and your story seems to illustrate very neatly the problems with the system. I wonder if you'd send me a message, or reply on here, as it would be great to have a chat. And if anyone else reading this thread has a similar bizarre CRB tale, please feel free to get in touch.

Thanks,

Georgia

I work in a small independent bookshop, and we have teenagers of 14 or 15 in on work experience quite often, and they mostly seem to really enjoy it. The list of teenagers interested in a Saturday job runs to pages, but it seems likely that as of next year we won't be able to take any kids in any capacity because of the expense to the boss of CRB-checking the adult staff. This seems a real shame, as it will mean that teenagers will get fewer and fewer opportunities to do interesting work, and will increasingly only be able to work in "McJobs" in big companies.

On a slightly different note, I did experience some relatively minor harrassment during jobs as a teenager (comments, odd grope etc), which I don't think a CRB check would have prevented. It didn't traumatise me for life, in fact I started to learn how to stand up for myself etc and deal with leery men, which god knows is a skill that women need to have under their belt. If my parents had known, I'm sure they would have made me chuck the jobs in etc, and I would have been gutted at losing my independence and the cash, frankly.

I do not want to diminish anyone's experience of serious abuse in any way, and of course we must do our best to protect children, but this sledgehammer to crack a nut approach is doing so much damage to our teenagers' chances to build independence and responsibility, and is surely adding to the "But There's Nothing To Do Around Here" refrain which kids trot out when they've been behaving like PITAs.

Looking at this after a few months, I accept a lot of the comments made, but am pleased to hear that many Local Authorities hope to have a system whereby an individual can apply for a CRB that covers the WHOLE county for 3 years. There is a benefit to the tax payer, enhanced CRB checks cost money to the local authority and ultimately YOU the rate payer will pay. I know one person who has EIGHT separate CRBs(eg. beavers, temp nursery worker, volunteer counsellor, teaching assistant, relief care worker, bereavement counsellor, night children's home relief cover, and more (4 with the same local authority). Can you top that ?

why only the county and not the country?

Madness...

What happens when a sixth former in a school turns 18, do they have to have a crb check to go to school next day as they will be standing in the lunch queue (or even a toilet) next to an eleven year old.

It's a misunderstanding - you are only allowed to be CRB checked if you are involved with children or vulnerable adults. Elderly adults are not necessarily classed as vulnerable adults, by the way.

From a programme I recently heard on Radio 4 (I think it might have been You and Yours), I understand it might even be an offence for an employer to insist on someone applying for a CRB check in any other circumstances. Presumably this would apply in the charitable sector as well.

This is because there has been a lot of abuse of the CRB system by employers, for example getting employees to leave the job title blank on the form and then filling in something that sounds like it is eligible for the CRB check. This is so employers can avoid having to make other arrangements for such checks at presumably greater expense to themselves.

A further point - 18 year old school pupils in Cambridgeshire attending local authority music groups are obliged to apply for a CRB check in order to continue attending the groups.

I am wondering why we don't all stand up to this nonsense - having a CRB check simply means someone hasn't got caught breaking the law, it does not mean they are not capable of it, and indeed haven't broken the law recently without getting caught.

I gather paedophiles are active on average for about 6 years before getting caught. I rest my case.

and what about 15,16 and 17 year olds who are actually a danger to their teachers, carers or other adults by their physical size and "maturity"

I personally don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. Even though I'm very lucky and have never been abused myself, I can immediately think of at least two people that I have personally known who have either abused or had an unhealthy interest in children. I really don't think that it's that rare. And what do you do? Do you make an exception for the elderly, for women, for elderly women? Where do you draw the line? I am happy that we're all a bit more paranoid/careful now.

What I do agree with is that the whole CRB check system is completely bloated and is tying worthwhile organisations in red tape. My Mum has at least three CRB checks done - all of them needing to be kept up to date of course. DH is very cynical and thinks that it's just a money-making scheme for the government, and I find it hard to disagree with him.

The new ISA system may solve some of the issues, though I suspect not all. From what they have published so far, it appears to me to be an Continuous CRB Check - and it IS transferable between jobs. Independent Safeguarding Authority