New report from KPSS on DBS checks where name & ‘gender’ are changed & the safeguarding loopholes that creates.

[GrumpyMenopausalWombWielder]

Link To Twitter Thread

Link To Report on KPSS Website

"Our new report, DBS Checks & Identity Verification: Safeguarding Loopholes Created by Changes of Identity is now on our website"

"We found that when individuals who have applied to work in roles where safeguarding applies submit identity documents for DBS checks that display a new identity, safeguarding loopholes are created because the applicant can sever the link with any existing records of offending. 2/"

"The result is that identity verification is compromised & there is no guarantee that the information returned during a DBS check & displayed on the certificate will be accurate or complete. 3/"

"The most wide-reaching loopholes are created where individuals change both their name and gender. This is because of the exceptional enhanced privacy rights the DBS grants to those who change gender.
4/"

"Any individual can easily, and for any reason, change their name and gender on documents commonly used to establish identity via a process of self-declaration. These documents, including passport & driving licence, can be presented for the purposes of a DBS check. 5/"

"Exceptional privacy rights allow an applicant who changed gender to withhold all their previous names from their DBS certificate. Disclosing previous identities is a key component of safeguarding and DBS certificates for other individuals display all other names used. 6/"

"Applicants who change their gender can also conceal their sex & the DBS certificate issued will display their acquired gender instead. The importance of sex to safeguarding means that for all other applicants, sex is always displayed. 7/"

"The current operation of the DBS regime means that organisations requesting DBS checks cannot have confidence in the information disclosed. We propose:

• Mandatory use of NI numbers for DBS checks & identity changes
• DBS certificates display sex registered at birth 8/"

"* DBS certificates display other names used for all applicants, including those who have changed gender as part of changing identity 9/"

"The rules of safeguarding must apply equally to everyone. Whenever the members of one group are excused from the normal requirements of safeguarding, a loophole is created that is ripe for exploitation. 10/"

"KPSS is the only organisation prepared to expose this. To date, the government is unwilling to acknowledge or address this. We will be pushing this at Tory Conference. Constituency contacts: we will be asking for your help. 11/11"

This is a really important report & a subject well worth discussion.

@KeepPrisonsSingleSex

Thank you.

I have recently discovered that the DBS cannot actually see if an application has multiple DBS checks.

So if they are referred and barred then DBS have no idea where else they may be working / volunteering. No that they would tell those other organisations in any case !

Have you contributed to the DBS review ?

NI number is under utilised in DBS checks and there is no requirement to submit it for a DBS check.

WTAF!

Wow.
It's clearly a deliberate feature, not a bug or oversight.

Wow.

When the CRB was new, I applied for an enhanced check. It was delayed by weeks and weeks because I used the title Ms but didn't declare any previous surnames - I didn't have any, as I was unmarried at the time but had used Ms since I applied for my first bank account when I was a teen.

The CRB was adamant that Ms must equal married and spent weeks looking for an nonexistent other surname instead of just phoning me and asking me, causing me lost earnings because I couldn't start my job. And I guess they were kind of right, because I was working with unsupervised access to kids including babies, although they could have saved us all some time by asking me about the apparent discrepancy.

There should be no circumstances where the DBS doesn't have all previous names. Perhaps it might be feasible to hold previous names back from the employer in certain circumstances.

Where a I live our identity is recorded including fingerprints. Surely this would be a way of checking the identity of at least those who have been convicted? But I am no expert and have no idea how that could work , time restraints etc.
but the report KPSS have done is excellent. should we be bombarding our MPs or only selected ones?

And @WarriorN did you mean that a criminal record from abroad doesn't appear on a UK dbs check, or a criminal record acquired as a minor?

I'd have to ask for the full details; this was given as the case that triggered the new Google searches of your name they are now required to do.

It may have been both. I was surprised that the Spanish criminal record didn't follow with the individual.

Agree - no shit Sherlock.

They're also doing this due to how social media can keep records of inappropriate stuff. They may then weigh up age at posting etc. which in the case of some we've discussed on fwr is a Good Thing.

😮

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/17/spanish-child-murderer-hired-oxford-primary-school-keeping-past/

This is the case, it was actually a primary school and she was a teaching assistant.

She was released in 2006 and moved to the UK where she applied to work in schools without disclosing her criminal history. González applied for the Oxford role in April 2016, before starting work in September of that year. She left the school in July 2017.

No doubt there’ll be someone along soon to claim that it was only ONE child murdered, so what’s the problem?

I wonder if someone to whom this loophole doesn't apply could make some sort of claim for discrimination? i.e. that they're being asked to provide information that not everyone is asked to provide.
Could the organisation justify why they need to keep the information for most people if they don't need to keep it for all people?

We've never yet established the equation of how many women and children harmed justify the appalling step of placing boundaries on male people's freedoms and choices. Up to and including rape in prisons so far.

The big challenge too for women in this is the suppression of information. Years ago during one of the big national safeguarding scandals, a grumpy chap from a local authority informed me that this kind of thing happened all the time across the country, the general public just didn't know it. It was only when a case 'escaped into the press' (his words) that it became known and this was viewed as a serious failure of the local authority. Because once in the papers difficult questions got asked, the public got angry and involved, accountability had to happen and it was all so bloody inconvenient.

Now add to that standard suppression the additional training of the TQ+ political lobbies that any negative publicity regarding them is transphobic, regardless of how factual. we have MNetters here who have sat in meetings in tears sharing their highly sensitive evidence on why mixed sex spaces failed them, only later to have those leading the meeting openly and cheerfully state to the press that no one had ever voiced any fears or complaints, and nothing had ever happened.

Women are not playing on anything like a fair, moral playing field in all this.

Anyone with even half a brain cell would have thought about it the moment Huntley wanted to be known as a woman. Huntley, the actual person that was pivotal in the overhaul of the CRB system, and yet none of TPTB thought "hang on, this isn't right'.

For years councils, institution, the health service have covered up child and adult sexual abuse. I have come across not one but four serial sex offenders employed by three local councils and one NHS trust. Although they were not convicted at the time they were ‘known’ for inappropriate behaviour towards women and very sadly in three of the cases children. It is exactly these men who will use this loophole. Nothing changes - UK institutions systematically support sex offenders and systematically silence women.

I've been thinking about this recently because I tried to compare sports results for transgender athletes pre and post transition. I couldn't. I couldn't find the athletes results under their old, "deadname". It was as if their previous life didn't exist. And as I have been DBS checked and was asked for my maiden name, this bothered me. I'm glad it's been finally raised and acknowledged.

It does not. At least not in Scotland. I was asked for proof that I didn't have a criminal record from the two countries I lived in the first time I applied, but the second time, as I had been in Scotland for at least ten years, I didn't even have to disclose I lived abroad previously.

So if they're not asking, you don't have to disclose and there's no international criminal file as standard that would contain this information.

Thanks for confirming; that's why they Google all previous names now.

Still an issue with the massive loophole described in this thread.

I renewed my DBS recently (volunteering with children and adults classed as vulnerable). When I said my title was Ms the charity staff worker sighed and said the system will assume you're divorced and will insist you have other previous names. There seems to be no common sense involved in it at all.

"Using the NI number is a much better idea".

I am not so sure about that. I have come across a case in my civic role where someone who had undergone gender reassignment had been issued with a new NI card as part of the process of document change, and there was no link between their new identity and the NI payments made in their old identity.

The identity change, as far as I am aware, was utterly complete. They had essentially become a new person in the eyes of the state. Of course, that played havoc with their access to their NI, benefits and state pension account (they could no longer access it), and NHS continuity of care (because their old medical records were of someone who was administratively no longer in existence).

Once you change those documents to that extent, the old identity is effectively dead. So anything you accumulated prior to that is lost.

I keep meaning to find out how banks deal with such a radical identity change in terms of loans, mortgages, accounts and things like the names on property deeds etc.

It must be at least 5 years ago that I raised this on a thread (under another name) and was told that checks were done behind the scenes to ensure no slipping through the net, I remember saying that there didn’t seem to be any way of checking, especially if it relied on the honesty of applicants.

Are you sure about that? According to the government HMRC pages, the NI number stays the same

'Tax and National Insurance. To change gender in the National Insurance records you will need a Gender Recognition Certificate. However, once they have been notified that an individual wishes to live in a gender opposite to that assigned at birth the records will be moved to a department which will impose special security measures to protect privacy.'

www.gires.org.uk/documents-to-be-changed-upon-gender-transition/

Fingerprints the only useful tool perhaps?

Why should these pretenders have special rights to privacy when the rest of us don’t?