Wakefield Express Column - 18 September 2009

18/Sep/2009

Keeping our children safe is a top priority for every parent. It's my job in the Government to do everything I can to back parents so our children are protected.

But we know we can't wrap our children up in cotton wool. They need to be out and about with friends or at activities. And parents need to be able to rely on the Dad next door who helps out with lifts to cubs, or the local volunteer who runs football practice on Saturday mornings.

No-one wants unnecessary rules or red tape. But we do expect schools, clubs, cubs and brownies to check our children are with responsible adults they can trust.

So how exactly do we get the balance right in this difficult area? You might have seen this in the news recently, in connection with the new ‘Vetting and Barring’ scheme that starts from next summer for people working with children.

To be frank, a lot of the media reports about this have been really misleading. Of course if parents make arrangements to give each other's children lifts they don't need checks.

So let me put the record straight. The scheme was a recommendation from the inquiry following the tragic Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002. It aims to meet the need identified following those horrible events, for a single agency to vet and register everyone who wants to work or volunteer with children and vulnerable adults - and to bar unsuitable people.

At the moment there are a few registers of this kind in operation, so the new scheme should help by bringing things together in one place. People will only have to register once under the new scheme, not every time they change jobs as now, making the whole process simpler and more effective.

We’ve been listening to children’s organisations, like the NSPCC, about how the scheme should work, and there’s been widespread support for the general approach.

The experts agree that where people work with children (or vulnerable adults) on a ‘frequent or an intensive’ basis, or overnight, they need to register with the scheme.

If parents help out with the school fete or on a Saturday morning with the football team they won't need checks. But where, for example, a youth club lays on activities for children, then the regular helpers – paid or unpaid – should be vetted.

Parents who entrust their children to these organisations’ care would expect no less.

The scheme will apply to arrangements like these made through third parties such as a school or children’s centre. If parents make arrangements themselves then obviously it won’t apply.

I think these principles strike the right balance between who the scheme should cover and who it shouldn’t. But there’s no doubt it‘s difficult to decide how to apply these principles to real life situations, and where exactly we should draw the line.

How ‘frequent or intensive’, for example, should adult contact with children have to be for them to need to register?

This is a tough question – and an important one - so I’ve asked an expert to look at this to check we've got it right. He will tell us what he thinks in December, and if we need to change things to achieve the best balance then we will.

What matters is that we get the scheme absolutely right when it starts from the summer of next year.? That way we can be confident our kids are safe and having fun.