Crb Checks – Needless Nightmare or a Necessity?

Here’s another article from our resident Mr Grumpy of Buxton!

In a society as paranoid as the UK most people will have heard of the CRB Checks and have probably encountered some form of CRB Checking or have known somebody who has. Well, in the last month, a friend of mine has also experienced it within his employment. Why would he need a CRB Check? Does he work with vulnerable elderly people, or is he in contact with Children? Neither actually, as it happens he is a self employed tradesman, employed to work in many different environments including the occasional trip into a School or Old Folks’ home in order to carry out remedial or installation work.

Non of this work directly involves contact with, or actually working with vulnerable people or children. It just involves him working inside a building where such individuals may frequent, yet local legislation and the usual pen pushing ‘Jobsworths’ require him to be CRB Checked before he can gain contract work for and enter such an environment. This is where the problem begins.

First of all, its almost impossible for somebody working for themselves to obtain a CRB enhanced disclosure check to the level and satisfaction required by many local schools and other council run establishments which require it. Upon calling those entities who have implemented this regulation, my friend has been told to get his employer to provide the checks via an umbrella organisation, a little impossible when you are self employed and have no employer! Upon calling the Umbrella organisations directly, he was told that they are unable to provide individuals with CRB Checks, and to get his employer to make contact with them…….and around and around it goes.

What’s wrong with this picture? Suddenly we have a situation where a hard working, self employed individual is prevented from carrying out his trade purely through a piece of legislation. My friend is perfectly willing to obtain the requested certification and pay the relevant fees to become CRB checked, however he is prevented from doing so because nobody can supply him with this CRB checking service. His only crime and reason for refusal – being self employed!

It seems yet again we have a piece of rushed through legislation which is so ill thought out that its costing people money and stopping honest hard working people from earning a living. Surely, if legislation is introduced, there has to exist an easy and nationally accessible means of applying for and obtaining such CRB certification and by ‘accessible’, I mean available to everybody of which it is likely to affect including those not directly employed by the council or care home, or doing voluntary work. So far, my friend is unable to accept work in any of these institutions and that is a great loss of business which, in a recession, may actually result in the total loss of his business and him joining the UK’s only remaining growth industry – Unemployment.

I can understand and applaud the need for those whose entire employment description involves work with children and the elderly, day in – day out to obtain such obvious security checks, but even in this case, I’ve heard stories of people declined JSA and various other benefits whilst they wait for the CRB Check to complete after being offered full or part time employment.

A friends partner told me they’d waited over 8 weeks for a CRB Check to be completed by her employer before she could start work there, and in the meantime, because she couldn’t actually start the job meant that she was not entitled to benefit payments as she was ‘technically employed’. Obviously, without any income in the interim, she fell behind with bill payments and nearly lost her home. How ludicrous is that? Clearly, the CRB Checking infrastructure is not in place, so it cannot cope with the load. Perhaps its the same people dealing with CRB checks as deal with the issuing of passports?!

Its amazing that hackers can literally clone somebody’s life, background and identity from their ‘facebook’ profile in minutes, yet it takes the powers that be anything around 8+ weeks to carry out what is basically just a glorified Police background check.

Do they need more staff working in the CRB Checking environment? If so, I can recommend many of the 2.2 Million people currently unemployed. I’m sure most of them would be able to do the job, so go fill your boots.

So, do CRB Checks actually work? Does CRB Checking actively prevent more of the tragic instances that we read about in the papers? Did CRB Checks stop the death of ‘Baby Peter’? How about the needless and tragic deaths more recently of Augustino, Gianluca, and Cecilia Riggi? Did it prevent the violet death of 15 year old Zac Olumegbon from London? It seems from the stories in the media that more Children suffer and are at risk as a direct result of abuse, neglect and violence at the hands of family members and even their peers, than they do from outsiders or Electricians and Plumbers carrying out work in their school.

Society has reached a point now where people fear that if their neighbours’ house goes up for sale, that Jon Venables might be moved in next door. They view anybody stopping to assist a lost child with great suspicion and lose sleepless nights worrying that their children’s school bus driver might turn out to be a modern day Myra Hindley. In reality, those who embark on such crimes against Children and the Elderly are few and far between are still the same minority amongst the millions of normal individuals out there, just as they were 20 or 30 years ago, however, with the press hysteria, its now more heard about and has been hyped out of all proportion, and so its the majority who are constantly under the suspicion. Its a sad, but glaringly true fact that in the recent case of the Riggi children that with the law of averages, they probably would have been much safer and would still be alive today had they have been in the company of a random stranger passing in the street, rather than living with their Mother! There does seem to be a growing and very alarming trend for parents to commit acts of violence, neglect and even murder their children, and no CRB Checks are going to call a halt to that.

Seems what is needed is better observation, training and interest by those who are in contact with children and who could spot early signs of neglect taking place, and are in the best position to do something about it, and that includes professional individuals such as teachers as well as neighbours and other family members.

In fact, in relation to CRB Checks in the School Environment, already this year there has been a large number of media stories relating to children being attacked and murdered in their own school during the day, often in full view of the adults who have a duty of care towards them. Is this the work of some serial killer? Perhaps some 2010 version of ‘Jack the Ripper’ on the streets and stalking the playgrounds? No, this is children attacking other children with knives! It seems to me that in the current day and age, the growing trend of young teenagers carrying weapons actually places the Teachers more at risk from their Pupils than the other way round. Certainly, I cannot remember any multiple instance of a Teacher recently attacking a pupil, however there are plenty of media stories in relation to stabbings and fatalities resulting from teenagers attacking each other, and even turning violent against their teachers, so who is most at risk from whom?

Some element of common sense has to be applied here, after all, we have reached a point now where you have to obtain a CRB check in order to drive friends of your own children to school, or voluntarily offer to help run a school trip. I’m not surprised that parents are being accused of not showing an interest to PTA activities and in their child’s schooling. More recently, one school decided to make its own policy that parents had to be CRB Checked in order to attend sports days, and even after the story hit the national press, common sense still trailed in last as the biggest loser.

When my friend asked the local council why he was required to obtain a CRB check, he was told that it was because he worked in places where there were children. Well in that case, we are all going to require CRB checks just to walk around the supermarket or walk the dog in the local park. Have you also eaten at a local pub recently? These days, there seems to be more children running riot in these places than at an average village school playground. Are staff and their regulars in these places CRB checked?

In the meantime, if anybody could comment on this story with information as to where a self employed individual can obtain a full CRB Check without being directly employed by a council run establishment or having an ‘employer’, neither of which allow him to obtain the paperwork required to continue to earn a living, my friend would most certainly be interested.

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Crb Checks – Needless Nightmare or a Necessity?

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