In Nursery World Scotland this week, Drew McCanney, who managed the early years section of Fife Council's inspection unit and is now an early years trainer and consultant, says anecdotal evidence suggests when local authorities vetted applicants for childcare posts prior to April, checks of GP and social work records were responsible for more individuals being deemed unfit to work with children than criminal records checks.
In McCanney's experience, GP and social worker checks revealed information about abuse, domestic violence and concerns over childcare practice that were not recorded or known about elsewhere.
Childcare service providers are now responsible for vetting their own staff and are unlikely to obtain the same level of information from GPs as local authorities were able to. They also do not have the same ready access to social work records, which were often held in the same department as the local authority inspection unit.
Mr McCanney said, 'Checking GP and social work records was common practice in Scotland, although in some local authorities this was only done for owners and managers. I think it was a different picture in the south, where in some areas criminal record checks were only carried out on persons in charge, not on staff. In Scotland, everyone got at least a minimal police check.
'I don't think GPs would share the kind of information they shared with the local authority inspection and registration units with childcare providers - it would more likely be limited to saying whether someone was medically fit to do the job.
'The criminal records check carried out through Disclosure Scotland is just one component of the assessment of someone's fitness to work and I do have concerns that people can no longer access part of the information that was part of a process I know worked before.'
He also expressed concerns about a possible loophole in the legislation following the repeal of the parts of the Children Act 1989 that applied in Scotland and the introduction of the Regulation of Care Scotland Act 2001.
The Disqualification for Caring for Children Regulations, which were attached to the Children Act, no longer apply in Scotland. These regulations barred people who had had children removed from their care or who had had a registration to work with children cancelled, and these specific details have not been reproduced in new legislation.
However, Mr McCanney welcomed the forthcoming Protection of Children bill, due to be discussed in the Scottish Parliament this autumn, which will set up a list of adults who are unsuitable to work with children. He said, 'One of the flaws of the old system was that if we disqualified someone, we had no way of letting everybody else know.'
Brian Gorman, manager of Disclosure Scotland, said, 'We can only provide access to information held in police records. We are only part of the vetting process. Vetting is the responsibility of the employer.'
* See In My View p 34
