Schools - School Volunteers
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Many parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and carers help out at their local school, and every single one is grateful for the contribution they make. Some come in for a few hours and do one-to-one help with children learning to read, some help during meal times and breaks while others assist in numerous other ways. All, regardless of what they do, contribute to the service a school offers and to the education of the its pupils, and all schools welcome, and actively encourage, the involvement of parent, guardians and carers.
Independent Safeguarding Authority
Many of you will have read in the newspapers or heard on the television that the Government has tightened the child safety guidelines by introducing the Independent Safeguarding Authority, or ISA, and that this agency will require people who come into contact with children or vulnerable individuals to register their involvement.
The tightening of these guidelines stems from the conviction of Ian Huntley in December 2003 for the murder of two young school girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, where he worked as a school site agent. Huntley slipped through the existing vetting procedure and secured his job at the school despite having had a series of allegations relating to serious sexual offences made against him in the past, one of which resulted in him being charged. The resulting enquiry made many suggestions as to how the vetting system should be improved and as a result of some of these the ISA was set up.
Aims of the ISA
It is, in essence, an independent body tasked with ensuring the ongoing safety and protection of children and vulnerable people, and requires the vetting and registration of people who come into close contact with these groups to ensure that an incident like the Soham murders can never happen again, and that those who pose a danger to children are identified and prohibited from working with them.
Originally some papers reported that even taking children to Saturday football in the car, or ferrying them to Scouts or Guides would require registration and that prompted a lot of people to wonder what the registration would require and how much it would cost. As is often the case with Government rules and regulations, the scheme has changed since it was first announced and the guidelines have been both altered and relaxed.
The registration process
You may need to register for the scheme if you have frequent contact with children or vulnerable adults. This could be for paid or voluntary work. Frequent contact normally means once a week or more.
Deadlines for registration vary for people depending on the type of contact they have with children and young people and obviously the priorities are people who have full time contact such as school staff and carers at centres for those who are vulnerable.People who require registration and fail to register by their respective deadline could be prohibited from continuing their work and the organisation for whom they work could face a substantial fine. At present this applies to volunteers as well as paid professional staff.
For volunteers, the current deadline for registration is July 2015 but the Government should contact all schools well before then to give them advice on how to go about registering volunteer helpers. At present the cost of registration for volunteers is free and the information the Government will send out should give the schools all they to help you get registered.
You can find out more information on the government's website covering the The Vetting and Barring Scheme. The site has a helpline number so if your question remains unanswered after you have checked out the site, give them a call.
Local safeguarding procedures
If you are thinking of becoming a volunteer at your local school you may like to know about the present safeguarding procedures in place at our schools. To help with this, Sam Whit and Shefford Lower School have kindly let us use their safeguarding policy documents to give you some idea of how schools safeguard their pupils. If you need to know about the policy at your school, the school manager will be more than happy to help.