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SCREENING VOLUNTEERS
Screening is the term generally used to describe the practice of checking against police records, potential volunteers or employees who will have substantial access to children or vulnerable adults. Police records may show that the volunteer or employee has committed criminal offences that might make them unsuitable for certain roles within the sports organisation. Mechanisms for screening through police checks are not currently available to everyone, so clubs need to establish their own screening procedures to minimise the possibility of recruiting unsuitable volunteers.
Nothing can take the place of good practice when working with young and vulnerable people. Screening helps to identify those who are already known to be unsuitable to work with young and vulnerable people; it can put barriers in the way of potential harmful volunteers and it can work to publicise the club’s good policy and practice around recruiting suitable volunteers.
| Why do clubs need to screen volunteers? | Clubs need to screen volunteers for the following reasons:
- To make every possible effort to ensure the safety of young and vulnerable people within the organization.
- As a matter of good policy and practice.
- To meet legal responsibilities: the Home Office has announced that the government intends to press ahead with setting up the Criminal Records Bureau and a unified system of criminal record checks. Once this is established it will become a criminal offence for organisations to take on someone whom they know to be banned from working with children. This will apply to sports organisations from the smallest sports club through to national governing bodies of sport.
Think about the volunteers within your sports organisation who might have unsupervised, isolated or regular one-to-one contacts with young people - a coach, an official, a chaperone, a team manager, a sports leader.
The nature of volunteering in clubs allows for people changing from one role to another – this year’s fixtures secretary becomes next year’s team manager; this year’s sports leader becomes next year’s junior team coach. Anyone may have the potential to abuse children in some way.
Any screening procedures established by the sports organisation should be used consistently for all volunteers who might now, or in the future, have unsupervised, isolated or regular one-to-one contacts with young and vulnerable people. Existing volunteers can be asked to provide the same information as new, potential volunteers.
Clubs need the following information about potential volunteers:
- Clear identification of each volunteer
- Their previous involvement in sport or in volunteering
- A self declaration of:
any criminal record
notification to a social services department as being an actual potential risk to children
whether they have had action taken against them in relation to child abuse, sexual offences or violence.
| How to find the information | All volunteers should be required to complete a volunteer profile/application and to provide independent references from an appropriate source. The sensitive and confidential information could be a separate part of the profile form, which must be treated confidentially.
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