Charities voice fears over lack of checks under new vetting and barring legislation

Children will be endangered unless vetting and barring rules ensure that all adults in contact with them are checked whether they are supervised or not, a leading charity has warned.

Under legislation currently going through parliament, volunteers would only be checked if they have unsupervised contact with children.

The new vetting measures are outlined within the Freedoms Bill and the legislation has passed through its committee stage without being amended to address concerns raised by child protection experts.

Shaun Kelly, head of safeguarding at Action for Children, said his charity welcomed the vast majority of changes, but is calling for vetting checks to take place based on how often individuals have contact with children rather than whether or not staff are supervised.

“It can be dangerous as supervised volunteers can still have contact, arrange to see children and create relationships with children,” he said. “We would want to ensure anybody that has contact with children on a regular basis is checked.”

Kelly added that as the bill stands, health specialists, such as therapists, who are not linked to local health services, will not require vetting. Also, questions remain over who will foot the cost of checking volunteers, with charities potentially being left out of pocket.

Mervyn Barrett, head of resettlement information at crime reduction charity Nacro, said local authorities and other organisations responsible for vetting are likely to toe a cautious line regardless of the wording of the bill.

“If things continue as they have in the past, employers will take a very conservative approach about what constitutes regulated activity, so what the law says for the moment might not necessarily be reflected in practice.”

He added that the changes would allow many people with good intentions to work in positions that would otherwise have been denied to them. “There obviously needs to be a balance,” Barrett said. “CRB checks and vetting and barring are key to child protection. But the reality is that they are also about excluding people from paid and volunteering opportunities and sometimes the exclusion takes place on the basis of old and minor or completely irrelevant convictions.”

Following a third reading in the House of Commons, the bill will move on to the House of Lords.