Safeguarding children is everybody' responsibility and has to be built into routine procedures and practice. This is vitally important in the recruitment and retention of people who have contact with children. All organisations that employ staff or volunteers to work with children/in a paid or unpaid capacity should adopt a consistent and through process of safe recruitment in order to ensure that those recruited are suitable.

The vetting and barring scheme (VBS) involving the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) performs an important role in safer recruitment of people doing certain specified work or volunteering with children.

The Coalition Government commitment to scale back the vetting and barring scheme regime to common sense levels resulted in the terms of reference laid by parliament on 22 October 2010. The review considered the principles and objectives of the scheme. On 11 February 2011 the recommendations of the VBS remodelling and the criminal records review were announced. You can download the full VSB remodelling report and recommendations from this page.

The VBS remodelling regime review concluded that employers have a critical role to play in ensuring safe recruitment practices which should be supported by a proportionate central barring system.

 

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