Roles & responsibility
What is safer recruitment?
Safer recruitment is the set of checks and practices used when appointing people who will work with children — including enhanced DBS checks, references, and exploring gaps in employment.
The checks are only half of it. Interview practice, exploring gaps, and verifying identity and qualifications are as much a part of it as the disclosure that comes back.
Enhanced checks with barred list information are required for regulated activity, and starting someone before the check is complete requires a documented risk assessment and supervision rather than being a routine step.
The single central record of checks is what an inspector examines, and gaps in it are found quickly because it is a structured document.
In practice
A new starter beginning before one check has come back.
The home is short, the candidate is excellent, and the arrangement is that she will be supervised until it arrives.
What 'supervised' means has to be real rather than nominal, and a shift where she is the second person in the building at three in the morning is not it.
The pressure is always staffing, and this is the point at which a home's safeguarding culture is actually tested.
What goes wrong in practice
- Staff starting before checks complete with no documented risk assessment.
- References accepted without being verified with the source.
- Employment gaps noted at interview and never explored.