Can trustees obtain official court conviction details to support exclusion decision?

[GreySkiesAndSunshine]

I am a trustee for a charity that works with vulnerable people. We recently saw in the paper that this person who has started to get involved with the charity (not as a volunteer as that would require a DBS check) was convicted of a crime that makes it reasonable to think that they should not be around the vulnerable people we assist. We have asked them to stay away from the centre. Although we have a copy of the newspaper report of the conviction, we wondered if there was any other way of getting more official info, so we can save it on file to protect ourselves should that person complain about our decision.
Thanks in advance if anyone can point me in the right direction of court conviction details.

I would just keep a copy of the newspaper article. If they complain, you would show that, and they would then have to dispute it, wouldn't they?

In what way are they trying to get involved if they aren't volunteering? Are they trying to be a service user?

There is https://www.courtserve.net/courtlists/current/magistrates/indexv2magistrates.php

But it's a paid service. I think the magistrates listings are only available live, but Crown court listings are archived.

I think you need to review your safeguarding procedures. The safety of your clients shouldn't be reliant on you happening to see something reported in your local paper.

I assume that this individual will not have any unsupervised access to the vulnerable people that you support as you haven't DBS checked. What specific risk do you think he might present, and is preventing him from being involved the only way to mitigate that risk?

What would have happened if you hadn't seen the newspaper report?

How is this person involved in the Charity? Is this person a service user or a service user family member? Is person a supplier?

It seems concerning that if you had not seen it in the newspaper then it could have been missed.

How can they "get involved" if they aren't a volunteer or a Trustee? If it's someone hanging around the lobby, coming in with a client or delivering stationery then your Trustees need to review safeguarding procedures rather quickly.

The person presented as a service user. We do not conduct DBS checks on the members, only the volunteers, but we are aware of this person's history and one of the trustees saw the newspaper report. You are right, we would be unaware of other members with worrying histories, something to think about.

I think it's more complex if they are a service user. It would normally be for the probation service to set limits on activity. I'm not sure where you would stand in deciding that someone's past should exclude them from using the service.

It might be worth contacting the police/probation service for advice?

Indeed. Principles of safeguarding (1) any individual who hasn't been DBS checked should not be in any kind of trusted position when it comes to vulnerable people. Any other service users might have a serious DBS disclosure incident in their records and be just as much of a risk but you just don't know it. (2) even your volunteers who have been DBS checked shouldn't be assumed to be "safe" - the DBS just means that on the day the check was run, they hadn't been caught - yet!

I think it's wrong to exclude this individual from being a service user if he would otherwise qualify for the services offered. He may need the services delivered in a different way eg separately from other users if he's a serious threat and there's no other way to guard other people's safety. But eg a homeless person who is a rapist is still homeless and a homelessness charity tgat has been established to help homeless people has not been established to help just those people who haven't been convicted of rape. The procedures should be in place so that all service users have a similarly near-zero chance of having any opportunity to cause harm, whether or not you are aware of any convictions in their past.

To be honest I wonder whether you need to very much tighten your procedures in place to ensure that service users are highly supervised around other service users. Like it sounds like you happened to find out this service user's history, but there may be others with similar histories you do not know about. Banning this service user from the service might be classed as discrimination, but also you couldn't have banned him/her unless you happened to find out his history. If you hadn't happened to find out his history or others happen to have similar histories, how are you safe-guarding service users from them?

It is possible to exclude someone from your services due to a conviction, but you cannot have a blanket ban. You would need to conduct a clear risk assessment, taking into account the nature of the offence, how recent it is, and your specific environment so that you could show that your decision was fair and proportional. You also need to ensure that the individual concerned cannot argue that you are discriminating against them due to a protected characteristic, either directly or indirectly.

You would be acting lawfully if you can show that this individual is a clear risk to the safety of others or that their conviction puts them in conflict with your core purpose.

As others have said, there may be other service users with convictions that you don't know about. It may be that the better approach is to figure out how to keep all your service users safe regardless of who turns up.

Whatever role someone undertakes, you should go through safer recruitment and on that you can ask about relevant convictions. You can also ask people to voluntarily apply for a basic dbs.

Safer recruitment is not relevant for service users, which is what OP is talking about. Volunteers and employees should be safely recruited, but service users will generally be whoever turns up that needs the services supplied by the charity.

this is great thanks