If you work in an organisation that needs to protect children and vulnerable adults from harm, then you need to make sure that people who work with them have criminal records checks. These are called DBS (disclosure and barring service) checks.
What does a DBS check show?
Checks are carried out by DBS to help employers in England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man make safer recruiting decisions about who can work with vulnerable groups like children. This is done by checking the police records of anyone who applies for certain jobs or is volunteering with you.
A DBS check includes a full record of an individual’s convictions, cautions, reprimands and warnings, plus intelligence held by the UK police that relates to their suitability for working with children or vulnerable adults. It may also include information about a person that is not in the police’s centralised computer database, known as ‘soft intelligence’.
Enhanced DBS checks are required for those doing regulated activity, such as working with children and vulnerable adults in a school or nursery. These checks are more detailed than a standard DBS check and will reveal whether someone is on a barred list.
Barred Lists
The DBS maintains two lists: a Children’s Barred List and an Adult First List. If you are placed on either of these lists, it means that you can’t engage in regulated activity with any group of children or vulnerable adults without specialist legal advice.
DBS Updates
The DBS operates an optional online Update Service, which reduces the number of checks that need to be carried out. This allows subscribers to receive a new certificate on each of the three levels – Standard, Enhanced and Enhanced with Barred List – as long as they pay a subscription fee.