Child Protection

CRB. I dread those letters.

Not, I hasten to add, because I have anything to hide.

Just because they are a massive pain to arrange (okay, on the sale of Government bureaucracies they are not a pain really, but the waiting is beyond the timescales of most other waiting times). And that your jobs/voluntary work relies on your having one processed. Absolutely. There is no doubt. Without a CRB, you cannot work with children.

Which sounds wonderful, in theory.

Interesting fact, though: more child abuse is suffered within a family or friendship circle, than by strangers. In fact for a stranger to abuse a child is (comparatively) rare.

However, we still have a duty to ensure children are protected from people who would harm them. So it is right that people who are looking after children in school (anyone in school, really), has to have a CRB. It is right that when I take ten disabled children to Lourdes with my HCPT group every year, I have to have a CRB.

But let's look at some of the issues around these CRB checks:

1. There are unreliable processing times - some people have had their CRB through in a day. One lady I know however, is (technically) still waiting for a CRB, after being offered a job. She had to turn down the job after delaying them three months, because the offices responsible for CRB had lost her file TWICE.

2. If a mother wishes to sit in the passenger seat of a Council car while they escort the child to school, she needs a CRB. If she drives her own car, she doesn't. There is so much wrong here, that it's almost beyond belief. What if she failed her CRB check? Would they honestly refuse to let her escort her child to school but then leave the child at home with her? (Or him, I am using mother as an example, not as an indicator of any gender bias at all!)

3. Authors like Philip Pullman who are giving up their valuable time to go into a school to read, have to have a CRB check? What? No teacher I have ever met would leave even Philip Pullman alone in a class for long at all. For his own safety! ;)

4. One of my friends has five. FIVE. FIVE CRBs! One, for her teaching. Two, for her work with Rainbows/Brownies/Guides. Three, for a youth group she runs. Four, for her work in an old people's home (which probably requires a POVA and other things too!). Five, for the trip to Lourdes which I go on with her. Now, CRBs have to be renewed every two years. Now that is brilliant. But to require a separate CRB to say the same thing for five separate jobs? Its just silly.

By providing unneccessarry, duplicated CRBs, we are putting pressure on the department, delaying it constantly. What if an employer takes a risk because the person they've hired is the best for the job, and employs him, only to discover six months later they were convicted for child abuse? (Incidentally, employers are not allowed to make decisions like that - so in that case, someone would have to wait six months to find out, possibly losing their job).

If we cut out the need for visitors to have CRBs. If we cut out the need for duplicate, triplicate (etc) CRBs. If we cut out pointless nonsense which says parents escorting their child needs CRBs. If we do all that, then the department will be able to focus on the more important clearance it needs to give.

And not bother about giving a sixth CRB to someone who's already had a fourth and fifth issued in a month.

When a system is bogged down with sheer oceans of paper (as the CRB system is), it can only weaken the protection we give to children. Make it streamlined, make it focused, and it will work far better.

Or to put it bluntly: cut out the crap, and focus on the important things.

Do not get me wrong. CRBs are valuable.