Disclosure for Volunteers

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Disclosure for Volunteers

• Hello
• Im Mike Smith
• I work for Staffordshire Moorlands Community and
  Voluntary Services.
• We provide a disclosure service to the voluntary
  and community sector in Staffordshire.

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The National view

• "The role of the Criminal Records Bureau is to
  reduce the risk of abuse by ensuring that those
  who are unsuitable are not able to work with
  children and vulnerable adults"
• - David Blunkett MP

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What is Disclosure?

• Disclosure is the name for the process which
  used to be called Police checks.
• The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) has provided
  the service called Disclosure since 2000. The
  checks now include registers held by several
  governments departments.
• This is a carefully regulated one-stop shop
  service that enables organisations to gain access
  to important criminal and other information for
  recruitment and licensing purposes.

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Why is Disclosure necessary?

• The CRB helps protect the public through its
  Disclosure service. The aim is to detect those
  individuals who seek to harm children or
  vulnerable adults and prevent them from doing so.
• You may remember the murder of Holly Wells and
  Jessica Chapman, schoolgirls from Soham, in
  Cambridgeshire, in 2002.
• The school caretaker Ian Huntley, murdered them.
  He gained a position of trust at the school,
  despite having Police intelligence clearly
  showing he was a threat to young children.

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What was done?

• The need to protect both children (under 18s)
  and vulnerable adults has been an issue for many
  years.
• Disparate organisations kept records for the
  protection of their profession. For example, the
  Royal College of Nurses have a register of
  members disciplined by the College.Often this
  information was not available outside the
  respective bodies.

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How can Disclosure affect volunteers?

• Disclosure is not compulsory (yet).
• CRB have recruited organisations to allow access
  to the disclosure service across all the areas of
  caring for children and vulnerable adults.
  Thats where we come in.
• They want to encourage all types of service
  providers to include disclosure in their
  recruitment of paid workers and volunteers.

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So, if your are thinking of volunteering.

• You may be asked to disclose any current records
  which apply to you. Organisations can only ask
  for disclosure in appropriate circumstances.
• You may be interested in volunteering for work
  with toddlers groups or adult learning support,
  there are thousands of opportunities to volunteer
  and many of them will involve disclosure.
• The good news is that disclosure for volunteers
  is free, there should be no cost to you!

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How does disclosure work?

• Sorry, but you do have to fill in part of a form.
  Personal details, previous names or addresses in
  the last 5 years, that kind of detail.
• The registered body (me) checks the form and the
  identity documents you produce, such as passport,
  driving licence etc and countersigns it. It then
  goes to CRB at Liverpool.
• 3 to 5 weeks later (ish) the CRB issues a
  disclosure certificate to you the applicant and
  sends an exact copy to me the countersignator.
• I only see the same information as the applicant
  sees, unless Police specify confidentiality.

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What happens if I decline disclosure?

• That depends on the organisation that you wish to
  volunteer with. Disclosure is not compulsory yet,
  though the law on safeguarding is changing in
  2007.
• They may feel that without the protection of
  disclosure, they cannot offer you a place. They
  would certainly be entitled to take that
  view.They do have a duty of care to their
  clients
• The best scenario would be an open and honest
  discussion on the issues around the need to
  disclose. I am happy to help.

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Points to remember

• Disclosure is intended to protect everyone,
  including volunteers, working to support children
  or vulnerable adults.
• A request for disclosure is NOT a way of accusing
  people of wrong doing.
• If you want to work with children or vulnerable
  adults, then they should be able to allow you
  into their environment with confidence.
• Registered bodies only keep personal details for
  6 months and then destroy them.

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Where to Get More Information

• Ask me now, any questions?
• Visit www.crb.org.uk

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Want to know more about volunteering?

• Visit www.do-it.org.uk
• Or contact your volunteer coordinator.

Thanks for listening, please think about
volunteering its a win win activity. Any
questions? Im available now.