Child
Protection – Always on the agenda
Child
protection is an issue that affects all organisations
and individuals that work with under 18’s; particularly
those involved with physical activities where the
youngsters often change into the appropriate clothing
at the venue and effective coaching invariably requires
some physical contact.
Many organisations offer guidance on ‘best practice’
when working with children and one common point that
they all agree on is that organisations placing people
in roles where they will come into contact with under
18’s (or under 16’s in the workplace)
should check that those people have no known history
that would make them unsuitable to work in such a
role.
To facilitate such checks the Government created the
Criminal Records Bureau and the Scottish
Criminal Records Office in 2002 that provide
a means for eligible organisations to access all relevant
Government records through a document called a Disclosure.
This shows the results of a check against the records
at a specified moment in time.
For regulated institutions e.g. children’s care
homes, obtaining Disclosures is a legal requirement,
but the Government strongly recommends that all organisations
that work with children use the Disclosures service.
In support of this many insurers take the position
that obtaining Disclosures for eligible roles is a
‘reasonable step to avoid a claim’ and
will reject a claim resulting from an act for which
the perpetrator has a history that would have come
to light had the policyholder checked. Many venues
such as schools, halls and theatres are also requiring
that staff and backstage helpers be checked where
there are children in the cast.
Even without this external encouragement most dance
professionals, and all dance associations, recognise
that the industry has a duty of care to protect children
who participate, and at the same time to protect the
integrity of the industry itself. There is also a
recognition that parents need to be assured that dance
schools take child protection seriously and have backstage
access policies.
However the law underpinning Disclosures is such that
self employed people, i.e. most dance teachers, and
the heads of organisations, i.e. school proprietors,
cannot apply for Disclosures solely at their own request.
Consequently in 2005 the ISTD partnered with DDC,
a registered CRB Umbrella Body, to create a scheme
whereby the ISTD would act as the requesting organisation
and participating members could obtain a Disclosure.
The scheme also provides members with a displayable
certificate issued by the ISTD to say that the holder
has been checked through the CRB and there was nothing
disclosed that the ISTD considered relevant to their
working with children. If the Disclosure was not satisfactory
the ISTD certificate is not issued and endorsement
is effectively withheld.
(Disclosure documents themselves are not displayable,
even if they are ‘clear’, as it is unreasonable
to expect an individual to make public any past misdemeanours
that have no relevance to working with children in
order to show that they are no threat to children.)
The scheme was launched in January 2005 and in that
time over 450 members have participated. Across the
industry seven other dance associations have adopted
the same model through DDC for their members and in
total over 1350 teachers and dance school proprietors
have applied to join one or other of the schemes,
and many more teachers, chaperones, helpers and musicians
have been checked outside the schemes on behalf of
the schools themselves.
Joining the scheme costs £53.63 including
VAT and members should contact DDC on 0845 644 3298
or email ISTD@ddc.uk.net
To register a school to check non-members is free
and can be done online at www.ddc.uk.net/fastrack_form.php
Since May 2005 there have been a few changes, not
the least being significant increases in the CRB fee,
though the cost is every other year and is tax deductible.
The other significant change has been the CRB policy
on organisations accepting existing Disclosures or
‘portability’. In February the CRB announced
that they no longer endorsed this practice and were
withdrawing their verification service as from 1st
April 2006. Since they did not ban the practice outright
we have agreed with DDC that Disclosures obtained
from other sources are still accepted for the scheme
provided they:
• Are less than 30 days old
• Are at the Enhanced level
with the relevant lists having been checked
• Clear in all sections checked
• Can be verified with the
original Registered Body
This will allow members with alternative means of
obtaining a Disclosure to use this for the scheme.
In the 12 months since the scheme was launched a number
of questions have come up quite regularly so here
are the most frequently asked questions:
Q:
Do dance teachers have to have Disclosures?
A: Only
Government regulated organisations are required by
law to obtain Disclosures for staff that work with
children. However, there is a strong recommendation
from Government for all organisations that work with
children to use the Disclosure service. Not all schools/teachers
work with children so the ISTD scheme is voluntary,
but we would encourage all those who do to participate.
Q: Why
do we need to be checked again every two years?
A:
Disclosures are a check at a moment in time and something
could be added to the record a minute later. There
is currently no mechanism for the CRB to notify us
if the record is updated after a Disclosure has been
issued so the scheme requires that a member informs
us if they are involved in a recordable (on a Disclosure)
incident subsequent to the Disclosure being issued.
Clearly this is not a foolproof system so we have
limited the validity of the ISTD certificate to two
years.
Q: Who
should be CRB checked?
A: The
Disclosure service is effectively a fence around the
children and as with any fence, gaps are undesirable.
Certainly teachers and teaching assistants who could
work with children unsupervised should be checked.
Regular helpers andchaperones who normally develop
relationships with youngsters are candidates and some
feel it is a good policy to ask parents who wish to
accompany their children backstage to be checked (and
this provides a good reason to deny access to those
who arrive on the night). In many cases the venue
will specify who should be checked as a condition
of booking
Q: Who
can join the ISTD scheme?
A:
Only ISTD members can join the scheme, but the school
can check non-members directly.
Q: Are
students classified as volunteers?
A: Volunteers
are defined by the CRB as those working solely for
the benefit of others. Where a student is being checked
to enable them to teach or gain work experience they
are not considered to be volunteers. However if they
were just helping out with the younger pupils they
would be.
Q: What
is the difference between a Disclosure and a police
check?
A: Under
the Data Protection Act anybody can ask any organisation
who holds data on them, including the police, to provide
a copy. A police check is the document they issue
showing any information stored on the Police National
Computer.
The CRB check the PNC too, but also Department of
Health, Department of Education & Skills and police
intelligence records. Consequently Disclosures are
much more comprehensive checks.
The
Problem for the Self-employed
Disclosure
applications must be made by the subject at the request
of an organisation offering, or endorsing that person
to undertake, a role working with under 18’s.
The organisation must also be in a position to deny
the role or their endorsement to the individual if
their Disclosure is not satisfactory.
The organisation must also be in a position to receive
confidential information from the police if this is
released (very rare) which cannot, by law, be made
known to the subject of the Disclosure.
To comply with the above, an individual cannot be
the subject of the Disclosure and the person requesting
it. In short, individuals cannot check themselves.
Where somebody is self-employed or the head of an
organisation, there is nobody with the power to stop
them working with children if the Disclosure is not
satisfactory and the Registered Body has nowhere to
go with confidential information should any be released.
Safeguarding
Vulnerable Groups Bill
Previous editions of DANCE have included details of
this new Bill, which has now cleared through Parliament.
Details of the implementation will be complex and
are likely to be lengthy, as a new government computer
database will have to be created. The timescale for
introduction is not included in the Bill and therefore
its effect on dance teachers will not be immediate.
However, the ISTD continues to strongly recommend
that all teachers obtain a Criminal Records Disclosure
to demonstrate that they are suitable to work with
children. A further article explaining the ISTD disclosure
service via Due Diligence Checking is to be found
above.
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