At church we have to go through all the people who volunteer to help with creche and Sunday School and get them checked with the Criminal Records Bureau, even if they’ve been checked with the CRB to do something else somewhere else e.g. help out at Brownies. All those lovely grannies in their 60s and 70s who’ve been coming to church (sometimes the same church) since before I was born…
(I appreciate that even the nice-seeming people can turn out to be those who do inappropriate things, but it does seem a sledgehammer to crack a nut.)
While a quick check with online dictionaries didn’t yield a definition of “overstamp”, it does seem to be in widespread use (including, Wikipedia and Harvard Law Library) as a synonym for Overprint.
So no, I don’t agree, I think there is a very clear difference in meaning.
If you stamped the word pervert on first and then printed the rest of the card, for example. Is it worrying you terribly for some reason, or do you just have no work to do this afternoon?
I’m waiting for my CRB check to be processed at the moment before I can start an 11 hours a week job at the local library. Because someone somewhere has decided that there would be potential during the course of those 11 hours a week for me to build a relationship with one of the people who visit the library and ‘groom’ them in some way.
Everyone seems to acknowledge that this is something of a waste of time and money (and if I already had a CRB check for something else it would still need to be done again anyway) but it ‘has to be done’.
“Grooming one another (cleaning the hair of another gorilla librarian) is a major occupation among gorillas librarians in a band. Female gorillas librarians groom their offspring, one another, and the silverback; the silverback does not groom others.” 🙂
So presumably if a paedophile did get a job in a library and groomed a kid there wouldn’t be a public outcry demanding why checks aren’t made on potential employees, Nic? No such hysteria was whipped up in response to Soham?
Can’t win really. Clearly multiple checks are a nonsense but I am not sure what I think about checks in general, especially when the organisation is not a voluntary one and it provides access to children. How far should our duty of care extend when it comes to protecting children. Perhaps it has gone to far but I am not sure it should be reeled back to nothing.
I think the checks are a good thing in general (though perhaps not for spending 2 hours helping at a school disco with other people around – although if a parent managed to get a child on their own and assualt them in some way, everyone would be baying for blood and demanding that someone take the blame, so who knows?), but multiple checks seems ott – might make more sense to get a certificate or something that would last you the 3 years (is it 3? I can’t remember).
Nic, of course you should be checked for the library job – it’s not so much the possibility of grooming, but rather of some opportunistic molestation that I’d be more worried about. Though of course you might just have not been caught before! But I think it’s good to know a bit about people.
My brother is doing some work for the Met now – his checks have just been completed, only about 7 weeks after he started working there (this is good going apparently). He has a pass for the building that lasts for 3 years, but his security check lasts for 10! (I’m sure my mum said it’s valid until 2016.) So clearly if you want to engage safely in terrorist activity, get yourself checked out when you’re clean, and then you have ten years of being trusted 😉
Nah, definitely shouldn’t be rolled back to nothing but I think there is a general air of hysteria.
Realistically the chance for me to build any sort of relationship with anyone working 11 hours a week in a public library is very small. Yes it does exist, but equally does the possibility that I have such tendancies but have never been caught yet anyway so a CRB would reveal nothing.
Don’t have the answer to this one but I wouldn’t have thought a library would be the first choice ‘grooming ground’ for a paedophile.
Crossed with your comment Alison.
Do you really think that a library is somewhere where that threat exists? Certainly there are signs up at the one I’ll be working at asking parents not to leave their children in the library, that staff are there to help only. There is no childcare element to the job and things like storytime or homework clubs are run there with the express condition that there is a parent or carer present.
At Dreamieland we did run a basic check on staff through the now non-existant child protection register which just sent us back a yes or a no as to whether the potential employees name was on the register of known child sex offenders. We ran toddler groups, children’s parties, craft clubs, Christmas grottos and a children’s ride but again never without a parent or carer present (and we told our Santa’s to NEVER touch the children. We were amazed at home many parents came into the grotto and plonked their kids down on Santa’s lap).
And lol at your brother’s situation, that rather makes a mockery of the checking doesn’t it.
Ah, well what I thought I’d said, but clearly I got distracted and didn’t post it, was that what annoys me about the whole CRB check thing is that people assume if the check has been done everything is fine but it only means the person has never been caught – bit of a false sense of security. I think the CRBs are there to let employers off because they have done as much as they can to avoid employing a paedophile, but I don’t think they help parents really.
Libraries – is there an age from which you are allowed to use a library alone I wonder? We have similar signs in ours about parents being responsible for their kids, but I don’t want to have to accompany mine til they’re 18, so at what age can they go in by themselves?
I don’t understand why a librarian would need a CRB check- have I missed something? presumably this doesn’t necessarily apply to all libraries? Does this apply to shop assistants as well? and what about other library users, and shop users, and in fact all people?
I imagine librarians get checked as they’re council workers – I should think the council would run CRBs on any of their employees that could have any contact with children.
I don’t for one minute think it’s any guarantee of safety, BUT I can completely see why employers use them – it’s CYA pure and simple, surely? E.g. an 8 year old goes to the toilet alone at a library – which doesn’t seem unreasonable – and is followed and assaulted. If it turns out to be a library worker who did it, there would be an uproar. I expect the council could be sued and if they couldn’t show that they had done whatever they could to prevent such a situation happening, they’d lose, Badly.
And as for Soham – well, the girls sneaked out of the house without anyone knowing. No one in the world can legislate against that sort of thing. I don’t think Ian Huntley has anything to do with anything – but that view wasn’t expressed in the media after the murders, when things went completely hysterical.
My point about Soham was that after it was revealed that Huntley had been suspected of crimes (not even prosecuted or convicted) there was an outcry in the popular press as to how he had got a job in a school. Blunkett ordered an enquiry. Many people thought that school caretakers should be checked and individuals not employed on the basis of accusation, let alone conviction. In other words people (not just government) want these checks. I don’t think it is the government imposing them it the government responding to media led hysteria about how dangerous the world is for our kiddies; what the government can be accused of is insufficient guts to resist the demands of the tabloid press and their readers.
I don’t have strong views on what jobs should be checked (though there are some core ones that must be) but then I wouldn’t be ‘outraged of Berkshire’ if someone who hadn’t been checked ended up abusing their position. Society has to accept some degree of risk.
As an employer I would tend to check as broadly as I could simply to be able to demonstrate I had fulfilled some sort of duty of care if things did go wrong, i.e. protecting my back not the kids.
This in the guardian comment section this week was interesting too.
At church we have to go through all the people who volunteer to help with creche and Sunday School and get them checked with the Criminal Records Bureau, even if they’ve been checked with the CRB to do something else somewhere else e.g. help out at Brownies. All those lovely grannies in their 60s and 70s who’ve been coming to church (sometimes the same church) since before I was born…
(I appreciate that even the nice-seeming people can turn out to be those who do inappropriate things, but it does seem a sledgehammer to crack a nut.)
I certainly feel that expecting ppl to get a CRB for every different voluntary role is just wrong. There is no balance being taken on these matters.
Maybe we all need to carry ID cards…….
(overstamped with NOT A PERVERT, or PERVERT, depending)
Tim, what’s the difference between ‘stamped’ and ‘overstamped’? Isn’t the over a bit like the pro in proactive 😉
While a quick check with online dictionaries didn’t yield a definition of “overstamp”, it does seem to be in widespread use (including, Wikipedia and Harvard Law Library) as a synonym for Overprint.
So no, I don’t agree, I think there is a very clear difference in meaning.
And the difference is……..
……..in relation to an ID Card ‘stamped’ with the word pervert and ID Card ‘overstamped’ with the word pervert. How would they look different?
If you stamped the word pervert on first and then printed the rest of the card, for example. Is it worrying you terribly for some reason, or do you just have no work to do this afternoon?
I’m waiting for my CRB check to be processed at the moment before I can start an 11 hours a week job at the local library. Because someone somewhere has decided that there would be potential during the course of those 11 hours a week for me to build a relationship with one of the people who visit the library and ‘groom’ them in some way.
Everyone seems to acknowledge that this is something of a waste of time and money (and if I already had a CRB check for something else it would still need to be done again anyway) but it ‘has to be done’.
“Grooming one another (cleaning the hair of another
gorillalibrarian) is a major occupation amonggorillaslibrarians in a band. Femalegorillaslibrarians groom their offspring, one another, and the silverback; the silverback does not groom others.” 🙂Did I go into moderation or did I forget to actually post the comment I think I wrote?
I think you forgot to post the comment – can’t see one waiting.
So presumably if a paedophile did get a job in a library and groomed a kid there wouldn’t be a public outcry demanding why checks aren’t made on potential employees, Nic? No such hysteria was whipped up in response to Soham?
Can’t win really. Clearly multiple checks are a nonsense but I am not sure what I think about checks in general, especially when the organisation is not a voluntary one and it provides access to children. How far should our duty of care extend when it comes to protecting children. Perhaps it has gone to far but I am not sure it should be reeled back to nothing.
I think the checks are a good thing in general (though perhaps not for spending 2 hours helping at a school disco with other people around – although if a parent managed to get a child on their own and assualt them in some way, everyone would be baying for blood and demanding that someone take the blame, so who knows?), but multiple checks seems ott – might make more sense to get a certificate or something that would last you the 3 years (is it 3? I can’t remember).
Nic, of course you should be checked for the library job – it’s not so much the possibility of grooming, but rather of some opportunistic molestation that I’d be more worried about. Though of course you might just have not been caught before! But I think it’s good to know a bit about people.
My brother is doing some work for the Met now – his checks have just been completed, only about 7 weeks after he started working there (this is good going apparently). He has a pass for the building that lasts for 3 years, but his security check lasts for 10! (I’m sure my mum said it’s valid until 2016.) So clearly if you want to engage safely in terrorist activity, get yourself checked out when you’re clean, and then you have ten years of being trusted 😉
“Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman called in at the house where their former classroom assistant lived. Unfortunately she was not there, but her boyfriend was.
Unless this checking is to be extended to the friends and family of those involved with children it is just another example of politicians wanting to be seen to “do something”. ….. “
Nah, definitely shouldn’t be rolled back to nothing but I think there is a general air of hysteria.
Realistically the chance for me to build any sort of relationship with anyone working 11 hours a week in a public library is very small. Yes it does exist, but equally does the possibility that I have such tendancies but have never been caught yet anyway so a CRB would reveal nothing.
Don’t have the answer to this one but I wouldn’t have thought a library would be the first choice ‘grooming ground’ for a paedophile.
Crossed with your comment Alison.
Do you really think that a library is somewhere where that threat exists? Certainly there are signs up at the one I’ll be working at asking parents not to leave their children in the library, that staff are there to help only. There is no childcare element to the job and things like storytime or homework clubs are run there with the express condition that there is a parent or carer present.
At Dreamieland we did run a basic check on staff through the now non-existant child protection register which just sent us back a yes or a no as to whether the potential employees name was on the register of known child sex offenders. We ran toddler groups, children’s parties, craft clubs, Christmas grottos and a children’s ride but again never without a parent or carer present (and we told our Santa’s to NEVER touch the children. We were amazed at home many parents came into the grotto and plonked their kids down on Santa’s lap).
And lol at your brother’s situation, that rather makes a mockery of the checking doesn’t it.
Ah, well what I thought I’d said, but clearly I got distracted and didn’t post it, was that what annoys me about the whole CRB check thing is that people assume if the check has been done everything is fine but it only means the person has never been caught – bit of a false sense of security. I think the CRBs are there to let employers off because they have done as much as they can to avoid employing a paedophile, but I don’t think they help parents really.
Libraries – is there an age from which you are allowed to use a library alone I wonder? We have similar signs in ours about parents being responsible for their kids, but I don’t want to have to accompany mine til they’re 18, so at what age can they go in by themselves?
I don’t understand why a librarian would need a CRB check- have I missed something? presumably this doesn’t necessarily apply to all libraries? Does this apply to shop assistants as well? and what about other library users, and shop users, and in fact all people?
I imagine librarians get checked as they’re council workers – I should think the council would run CRBs on any of their employees that could have any contact with children.
I don’t for one minute think it’s any guarantee of safety, BUT I can completely see why employers use them – it’s CYA pure and simple, surely? E.g. an 8 year old goes to the toilet alone at a library – which doesn’t seem unreasonable – and is followed and assaulted. If it turns out to be a library worker who did it, there would be an uproar. I expect the council could be sued and if they couldn’t show that they had done whatever they could to prevent such a situation happening, they’d lose, Badly.
And as for Soham – well, the girls sneaked out of the house without anyone knowing. No one in the world can legislate against that sort of thing. I don’t think Ian Huntley has anything to do with anything – but that view wasn’t expressed in the media after the murders, when things went completely hysterical.
My point about Soham was that after it was revealed that Huntley had been suspected of crimes (not even prosecuted or convicted) there was an outcry in the popular press as to how he had got a job in a school. Blunkett ordered an enquiry. Many people thought that school caretakers should be checked and individuals not employed on the basis of accusation, let alone conviction. In other words people (not just government) want these checks. I don’t think it is the government imposing them it the government responding to media led hysteria about how dangerous the world is for our kiddies; what the government can be accused of is insufficient guts to resist the demands of the tabloid press and their readers.
I don’t have strong views on what jobs should be checked (though there are some core ones that must be) but then I wouldn’t be ‘outraged of Berkshire’ if someone who hadn’t been checked ended up abusing their position. Society has to accept some degree of risk.
As an employer I would tend to check as broadly as I could simply to be able to demonstrate I had fulfilled some sort of duty of care if things did go wrong, i.e. protecting my back not the kids.