Evaluate the Regulation of Care Provision for ‘looked After’ Children and Young People

D1 Evaluate the regulation of care provision for ‘looked after’ children and young people

Throughout this report, I will be evaluating the regulations of care provision for ‘looked after’ children and young people. I will be explaining how effective the regulations are.

DBS Check:

DBS Check stands for The Disclosure and Barring Service which helps employers make a safer recruitment decisions and prevent people who have criminal record from working with vulnerable people including children. DBS replaces the CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) and ISA (Independent Safeguarding Authority).

The Disclosure and Barring Service also manage individuals who have been barred from working with children and adults. In October 2009, there was a new safeguarding regulation put in place which explains the obligation

DBS checks have failed in number of occasions such as the Soham Murders. This was widely reported double murder which occurred in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England on August 2002. The victims were two 10 years old girls. Ian Huntley was a caretaker at local secondary school and he was convicted on 17 December 2003 of the girls’ murder and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, was the girl’s teaching assistant and she had provided Huntley with a false alibi receiving a 3 ½ year prison sentence for perverting the course of justice.

The CRB checks failed to protect the two girls against Huntley because they didn’t take action to the previous offences Huntley had done. When the investigation was being carried out they found that he had been investigated in the past for sexual offences and burglary but unfortunately he had still been allowed to work in a school as none of these investigations had resulted in a conviction. In August 1995, a joint investigation was launched by police and social services in Grimsby, after a 15 year old girl said that she had been raped by Huntley. The police did not proceed the case against Huntley due to the girl’s wishes. Another case was in March 1996, Huntley was charged with burglary at a Grimsby house that took place on 15 November 1995 when he stole electrical goods, jewellery and cash. This case was again ignored. In addition, in March 1996, he was again investigated over allegations of having sex with an underage girl but he was again not charged. Mostly every year, Huntley was investigated due to raping underage girls and woman but the police always fail to charge him.

The Humberside Police failed to check under the name Huntley on the Police computer as Huntley applied for the caretaker’s job under the name of ‘Ian Nixon’ but he did state on the application form that he was called Ian Huntley before. The Cambridgeshire Constabulary was also criticised for not following vetting guidelines.

The DBS checks can be seen as effective nowadays because after the Soham murders, the procedures of the CRB (DBS) tightened up. In January 2006, issues from previous cases resulted in the Department of Education and Skills coming to the conclusion and saying "Employers should obtain a CRB Enhanced Disclosure in respect of all teachers they recruit before the person is placed in a school." Huntley was hired by the school in November 2001 before the CRB came into force resulting in failure of DBS check. The DBS is more effective than CRB checks because extra protections are now added and the checks has been strengthened to ensure that unsuitable individuals are not allowed to have a job who deals with vulnerable groups.