APPENDIX 10
Memorandum by Age Concern England
INQUIRY INTO THE SETTING UP OF THE CRIMINAL
RECORDS BUREAU
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Age Concern England (the National Council
on Ageing) brings together Age Concern Organisations working at
a local level and 100 national bodies, including charities, professional
bodies and representational groups with an interest in older people
and ageing issues. Through our national information line, which
receives 285,000 telephone and postal enquiries a year, and the
information services offered by local Age Concern Organisations,
we are in day to day contact with older people and their concerns.
1.2 Our submission concentrates primarily
on the implications for volunteering by and with older people.
2. GENERAL
2.1 We welcome the Government's initiative
in taking steps to provide protection for children and other vulnerable
people against those who might wish to harm them. Such harm might
take various forms, some of them amounting to abuse. Age Concern
guidelines on protecting older people from abuse identify a number
of types of abuse—physical, sexual, psychological or emotional,
and financial.
2.2 We fully endorse the establishment of
the inquiry given the widespread concerns and questions about
the operational aspects of the Bureau and the impact of its activity
upon employing and volunteering organisations working with vulnerable
groups.
2.3 We acknowledge the usefulness of criminal
record checks as one means of determining whether a person wishing
to work with vulnerable people (on a paid or unpaid basis) is
suitable for the job or voluntary position in question.
2.4 Age Concern provides services for older
people, many of whom might be defined as vulnerable adults within
the Police Act 1997 and the draft definition being used by the
Criminal Records Bureau for consultation. We also place older
people as volunteers with children and young people through our
Intergenerational Network. Our comments therefore apply to our
work with all age groups and the likelihood of our needing to
require the Enhanced Disclosure to be made available to us in
order to place large numbers of volunteers.
2.5 Our comments cover the following areas:
— The usefulness of criminal record
checks in recruitment and placement and use of the information.
— The cost and administration of the
service.
— The definition of Vulnerable (Adults)
and possible impact upon people's attitudes to work with older
people.
3. THE USEFULNESS
OF CRIMINAL
RECORD CHECKS
IN RECRUITMENT
AND PLACEMENT
AND USE
OF THE
INFORMATION
3.1 We acknowledge that there is no substitute
for high standards of recruitment of volunteers, as with recruitment
for paid employment; also that disclosure is an additional piece
of information to be considered in the recruitment process, not
a substitute for good practice. However, a criminal record check
gives only a snapshot of a person's history and as such has a
limited life as a means of ensuring that an individual wishing
to cause harm to vulnerable people is identified by disclosure.
The cost of and time spent in managing the process (by the Home
Office and organisations working with volunteers) need to balanced
with this in mind.
3.2 The information disclosed is potentially
extensive, all of which has to be carefully interpreted and the
context of the recorded activity understood. We are concerned
that the extensive nature of the Enhanced Disclosure might have
two very undesirable effects:
— Employing/volunteer placement organisations
might make judgements about the suitability of candidates on the
basis of disclosure out of fear, prejudice or ignorance. The possible
effect of this is that people with disclosure records in general
are discriminated against notwithstanding their suitability for
working with vulnerable people.
— People with criminal records (including
offences/information which could be deemed irrelevant to their
suitability to work with vulnerable groups) could exclude themselves
for fear of discrimination, thus working directly against the
objective of increasing active participation in civic life through
volunteering.
3.3 We are also concerned about how disclosure
information is passed on. For example, it is common for volunteers
to work with more than one agency at a time. There needs to be
a system in place to minimise the need for duplication in undertaking
checks. It is also possible that a volunteer might change from
a placement within the host organisation that does not require
disclosure to one that does. Good record keeping and personnel
systems within voluntary organisations should identify the need
for implementation of the disclosure process. However, this could
place an added pressure on the thousands of smaller voluntary
groups which are less likely to have the infrastructure to manage
this well, which are also likely to be organisations more dependant
upon volunteers in their operational management as well as service
provision. Another concern is that in the event of the disclosure
process being required, there may be a delay in giving a new placement
to an existing volunteer, who may become disillusioned and thereby
`lost' by the placement organisation.
4. THE COST
AND ADMINISTRATION
OF THE
SERVICE
4.1 The impact of charging for the service
is a major concern for voluntary organisations. Our member organisations
and groups involve at any one time anything from 50 to 500 volunteers
each. Statistics on volunteer turnover across our federation are
not yet available but we estimate that we could be facing the
need for up to 100,000 checks per year, without any means of recouping
the cost. This is likely to have a significant impact upon our
organisations in an environment where there tends to be little
availability of funding to support volunteers and volunteering
infrastructure, due to funder interests being primarily aimed
at the service to users. We believe this to be a common problem
in the voluntary sector.
4.2 We are also concerned that if prospective
volunteers are encouraged to pay for themselves, this again presents
an additional potential barrier to volunteering, not least if
poorly funded voluntary organisations start to expect prospective
volunteers to fund their own disclosure check.
4.3 The administration of the service, particularly
with regard to the time taken for the disclosure process, needs
to be responsive and manageable, not least with checks for volunteers,
whose interest, once captured needs to be sustained. We believe
that any delay beyond that reasonably planned for other recruitment
requirements (for example the taking of references) will create
an additional serious barrier to the promotion of volunteering,
with the possible outcome that willing and suitable volunteers
are `lost' and services to vulnerable people are unable to function
satisfactorily.
5. THE DEFINITION
OF VULNERABLE
(ADULTS) AND
POSSIBLE IMPACT
UPON PEOPLE'S
ATTITUDES TO
WORK WITH
OLDER PEOPLE
5.1 We understand that this inquiry is not
aimed primarily at the definition of vulnerable adults. We are
mindful however, that the current draft definition is broad. This
in itself may be found to be valid, but the danger exists that
organisations undertake responsibilities to protect their vulnerable
users in an overly cautious manner by giving the widest possible
interpretation of vulnerability to older service users. This may
significantly increase the work of the Bureau and the potential
for delay in the process. Importantly, it may also encourage organisations
concerned about protecting themselves from criticism or claims
for damages, to desist from working with more vulnerable groups
in society or categorise more people than necessary as vulnerable,
not least those who by virtue of chronological age alone, already
face prejudice and age discrimination. As an organisation actively
working against age discrimination we are keenly aware of the
fine balance between inadvertent discrimination through over protectiveness
and the duty of care to service users. In a society where age
discrimination legislation does not yet exist, ageist employment
practices and attitudes pervade at all levels and their impact
should not be overlooked nor minimised in the context of this
inquiry.
January 2001
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