Child abuse vetting scheme cancelled

[Dennis]

Goodbye and good riddance

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10314055.stm

The vetting scheme for nine million people working with children and vulnerable adults in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has been halted.

Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that registration, due to begin next month, has been put on hold.

There will be a review of the entire vetting and barring scheme, with a scaling back to "common-sense levels".

Shadow Home Secretary Meg Hillier says the cancellation is a "knee-jerk reaction".

The government says the vetting scheme would have been "disproportionate and overly burdensome".

Draconian

The proposed vetting database had been a response to the murders of two schoolgirls by school caretaker Ian Huntley in Soham in 2002.

Children's authors and school leaders had complained that the plans were an over-reaction.

Mrs May told the BBC that the measures were "draconian".

"You were assumed to be guilty until you were proven innocent, and told you were able to work with children," she said.

"All sorts of groups out there were deeply concerned about this and how it was going to affect them.

"There were schools where they were very concerned that foreign exchanges could be finished as a result of this, parents were worried about looking after other people's children after school."

A statement from the Home Office also said the proposed scheme "unduly infringes on civil liberties".

The government is now contacting 66,000 organisations, including charities, voluntary groups and education authorities, to tell them that the planned registration is being cancelled.

The first wave of registration was set to begin on 26 July - starting a process that would have required the gathering of information on nine million people.

This would have covered staff in education and health services, but also many other volunteers and charity groups.

The vetting system will now be "fundamentally re-modelled".

There had been complaints that requiring the registration of so many people was excessive and created an atmosphere of suspicion.

Author Philip Pullman had attacked the original plans, which affected people visiting schools, as "ludicrous and insulting". He and other writers had said they would stop going to schools if the changes went ahead.

Head teachers' leaders had complained the vetting scheme would deter valuable volunteers from helping schools.

But Labour's Meg Hillier said that the scheme had already been altered to address concerns about intrusiveness.

"The scheme was designed to ensure that parents could be certain their children were safe when in the care of professionals and regular volunteers who may be unknown to them," she said.

The Independent Safeguarding Authority, which was set to run this database, will continue to make decisions about barring inappropriate people from jobs.

Criminal record checks

It will also maintain the separate lists of people barred from working with children and vulnerable adults.

The existing requirements for criminal record checks will continue to apply.

It will also remain a criminal offence for barred individuals to apply to work with children or vulnerable adults.

The scheme was intended to tighten rules to prevent unsuitable people from getting jobs which could bring them into contact with children.

This would have been the biggest child protection database in the world.

In its original version, the database would have covered one in four of the adult population.

As well as widening the vetting process, the registration was intended to bring together information from a number of separate lists.

Adults were going to be charged £64 to register in England and Wales and £58 in Northern Ireland.

After concerns about the scale of the original proposed database, which would have kept details of 11 million people, the previous government amended plans so that fewer would be required to register.

It is now going to be stopped entirely, with a review set to create a much more slimmed-down version of the vetting scheme.

These schemes just give a feeling of mistrust and suspicion, without actually preventing anything
Paul

BBC Have Your Say

[Maza1987]

I appreciate the forum is entitled current events. But I'm pretty sure that relates to athletics and not current affairs .

[Dennis]

VBS was going to have a profound affect on athletics and so is relevant.

[fangio]

But the CRB legislation and the need for checks on anyone involved in regular contact with kids in a "job" (paid or unpaid) remains.

[Dennis]

But the CRB legislation and the need for checks on anyone involved in regular contact with kids in a "job" (paid or unpaid) remains.

But there is no longer the same legal imperative and penalties hanging over the sport that VBS would have brought in.

In was interesting reading the Have Your Say page on the BBC web site. The number of people with the government on this outnumbered those against by about seven or eight to one. Anti VBS and CRB sentiment was running pretty high.

No doubt UKA might well want to continue CRB checking people but it is going to be harder for them against this new atmosphere of checking being an infringement of civil liberties.

[Dennis]

BBC News Web site

Child safety vetting scheme 'to be scrapped'

A scheme for vetting people who work with children is to be scrapped, the government is preparing to announce.

The Daily Telegraph reports that following a review of the Vetting and Barring scheme, criminal record checks will only be carried out on those who have intensive contact with the young.

A potential 9m adults - who came into contact with children once a week or more - had been subject to checks.

Home Secretary Theresa May suspended it last June so a review could be held.

A Home Office spokesperson said an official announcement - which affects England, Wales and Northern Ireland - would be made shortly.

The previous government set up the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) in 2009 in response to the murders of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in Soham in 2002, by school caretaker Ian Huntley.

Halting the initiative last summer the home secretary called it "draconian", and the review was launched in October.

The Telegraph has reported that it will now be scaled back significantly - with half the number of people affected - and the emphasis will be shifted on to employers to ensure that the right staff are screened.

At the same time, the government will announce that criminal record checks are to be sent to individuals first - before they go to potential employers - to allow them to challenge any mistakes, the paper said.

Ms May has previously called for a more "common sense" approach that did not risk alienating volunteers doing valuable work.

Volunteers discouraged

Criticisms have included more than 12,000 innocent people being labelled as paedophiles, violent criminals and thieves through an error, and councils banning parents from playgrounds saying only vetted "play rangers" would be allowed in.

Some parents have also reported running into difficulties when trying to share the responsibilities of the school run.

The review has been led by the government's independent adviser for criminality information management, Sunita Mason.

Set up by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), the original VBS system was designed to prevent unsuitable people working with children and vulnerable adults, with employers facing prosecution for breaches.

An independent review of the scheme took place after complaints that volunteers were being discouraged because the registration net was too wide.

As a result, ministers agreed to vet adults only if they saw the same group of children or vulnerable people once a week or more, rather than once a month as originally proposed.

[flashcoach]

Thanks dennis, a bit of new tory commonsense at last

[candy100]

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ohhh nice info
VRy interesting to read it :P :D