In today's Sunday Times this article by Jenni Russell ...
Paranoia casts volunteers as perverts
The authority set up to prevent the wrong sort of people looking after children has become a monster
Richard Graham is willing to go to jail. The Conservative candidate for Gloucester, a former diplomat and a pensions manager, is so appalled by the government’s plans to vet all adults who come into regular contact with children or vulnerable adults that he is prepared to defy the law. Under new rules, any volunteers who regularly supervise, coach or even drive children as part of an organised activity must be cleared by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) or face a criminal record and a £5,000 fine.
Graham isn’t prepared to accept that the state should interfere in adults’ rights to trust one another. He and his son play for Gloucester City cricket team and at the start of next season Graham says he will, as usual, phone all the parents of under-18s to ask if they are happy for him to drive their children to games. If they say yes, that’s all the approval he needs. Should he be arrested, he’ll accept the consequences.
Graham is at one extreme in his reaction to the ISA. Manor community college, a school for 11- to 16-year-olds in Cambridge, is at the other. It has embraced the vetting and barring culture with zeal. Last week it put up notices announcing that no volunteers, visitors or contractors would be admitted to the school without an escort unless they had undergone an enhanced check with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) — one that revealed every conviction, allegation and suspicion held on police computers. The head said proudly that “taking risks with safeguarding children is not something I’m prepared to compromise on” (er ... sorry, teach ... shouldn't that be "something on which I'm not prepared to compromise"? - GOS).
The new zealotry is spreading. The Sunday Times has already revealed that some schools are asking for parents to be checked with the CRB before they can accompany children to carol services. Last month a doctor told me how his wife, a psychotherapist with a full CRB, had been denied admission to a school. The psychotherapist, who specialises in working with disturbed adolescents, had been asked by a mother to make an emergency visit during school hours to help a teenager she had been treating. When the mother and the counsellor reached the school, they were both refused entry. The psychotherapist was told that she needed to show both her passport and her full CRB certificate; the mother was told she couldn’t come in on the basis that she might endanger other children’s safety.
Arbitrary rules like these would have been unthinkable a year or so ago. That they are being invented now is a response to the new level of neurosis about children’s safety. The ISA, with its insistence that children are everywhere at risk, is feeding that neurosis. People have been reluctant to challenge it openly for fear of looking as if they are indifferent to children’s wellbeing. But last week the head teachers’ organisations decided to take a stand against the way the ISA is going to operate.
In a joint letter to Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, seven associations, representing both state and private schools, argued that the new vetting and barring legislation was excessive and would not protect children and added that its unintended consequences were grave.
The heads warned that fewer pupils were being offered work experience because employers were reluctant to put their staff through the checks. Foreign exchange trips were being cancelled because parents were unwilling to register with an authority that would then monitor them for life. All kinds of school activities, from visits, plays, fundraising, sports and community projects were now threatened by the legislation, as were schools’ abilities to find an emergency plumber or cover for an absent dinner lady.
Most tellingly, the heads pointed out that although the entire ISA superstructure was set up in response to the murders of two schoolgirls by a school caretaker, “Ian Huntley might well not have been exposed by the CRB system”. There could, they said, “be a false sense of security engendered by the completion of checks”.
The heads are asking for a complete review of the whole strategy. They know that Sir Roger Singleton, the ISA’s chairman, is looking at the organisation’s rules and is due to report next week. That, they say, is not enough.
Because the ISA is only just starting its operation, most people have no idea of the potential power it is going to wield over the 11m adults who work or volunteer with children, disabled or elderly people.
Being checked by the ISA is not a one-off process. Once you are registered, it will track you for life. It isn’t concerned only with your criminal record, but also with any behaviour that might be considered suspicious, either now or in the past. Your employers will be legally required to report any concerns about you, or any worrying incidents, such as a child accusing a teacher or a helper of assault, even if you are subsequently cleared.
If the ISA decides you are worthy of inquiry, its 200 caseworkers will have the power to decide whether you should be barred from working with children, or vulnerable adults, or both. Its criteria for possible bans are alarmingly broad. It isn’t restricting itself to identifying paedophiles. Its concern is to identify anyone who may ever put a child or vulnerable adult at risk of harm.
Once you are brought to the ISA’s attention as a cause for suspicion, its caseworkers have unprecedented authority to look into your lifestyle, including any history of drinking or drugs. Its list of possible warning signs runs to two pages and danger signals include: whether you believe you deserve to have sex (which must include at least half the population); whether you are emotionally lonely (that’s everyone I know at some time or another); and whether you are ever gratified by fantasies of hurting someone else (I am guilty on almost a daily basis, especially when aggressive drivers cut me up).
Any allegations ever made against you will act as a red flag, because staff are warned not to assume that an acquittal by a court or a professional body implies innocence. They are told to reach their own conclusions, based on a balance of probabilities. Should they be minded to bar you, you will have an eight-week window in which to argue your case, but if you should fail, it will be 10 years before you can attempt to have the bar lifted again. You may appeal, but only on the basis that the ISA has made an error of law or fact.
It is this combination of immense power, wide application and stigma that makes the ISA’s operation so alarming. Anyone who is barred will be widely assumed by the rest of the world to be a paedophile, turning them into a pariah.
The caseworkers who will wield this extraordinary power are described by the ISA’s literature as “independent experts”, who are “highly trained”. I asked the ISA’s chief executive, Adrian McAllister, a former policeman, about their background. Were they, for instance, all graduates? He seemed puzzled by the question. No, he said. Most had life experience. They were former prison officers, or had worked in care homes, or came from the Orange call centres. He had never, he said, been convinced by the connection between educational attainment and being able to make good balanced decisions.
Many voluntary agencies which initially supported the ISA now feel it has become a monster. There are clear hints that this week the government intends to back down a little on some of the body’s powers. It hopes some minor changes will kill off public concern. It shouldn’t. As the protest by Graham and the head teachers shows, the ISA is just one part of a paranoid system. The balance between protection and trust needs to be urgently rethought.
Some Times readers have responded already ...
"A friend of mine who runs a horticultural business would usually take on three children each year for their work experience.This year he didn't because of such proposed legislation.Next year he will be stopping any offers and rejecting approaches from schools" - Norman Mills
"This is such an absurd and vile process that denies what lies at the heart of all our lives – our natural love and commitment to children. Children are our future – what will they believe – only rules and more rules have any import – trust, compassion and affection will have no value and will be replaced by suspicion.
The ultimate paradox is that Father Christmas, The Tooth Fairy and all invisible friends, by this legislative process, will be expunged from the lives of all children !
This feels like history repeating itself - removing common sense, accountabilty and responsibility with total reliance on a rigid process ... ultimately empowering the bully to do as they wish within such a framework" - Jane Watts
"200 caseworkers to process the 11 million or so people who might fall into the group requiring screening? How can that possibly work? A process which would not have done anything to prevent the Soham murders? The establishment of paranoia and montorining for life of those who are screened? This is such a bad idea it beggars belief" - Ian Smith
"A significant price of Liberty is some degree of risk. The only way to keep all children entirely safe from all predatory adults is to forbid all adult-child interactions and leave then to the mercy of the local gang leaders instead" - David Cooper
"Seems somewhat counter-productive, after we've assumed everyone in the country to be a child killing rapist, there'll be no one to volunteer and kids will all end up being stuck in the classroom or the home.
Then we can set up another body to investigate why they're all getting fatter and have no social skills ..." - Chris Frankling
"Don't worry - the system will be reviewed once the first dozen people (men, of course) have been killed by vigilantes after being wrongly labelled by the ISA" - Martin Evans
"If it saves just one little kiddy from the pedos it will all be worthwhile" - I.A.M.Braindead
Actually, we made that last one up. Somebody was bound to say it eventually, so we thought we'd save them the trouble.
So the ISA operatives will be able to make decisions - life-changing decisions for some - on the basis of probability? You won't even need to have been accused of anything to be banned from contact with children? Golly, it makes you wonder just who these paragons of Solomonic wisdom are going to be. This is the government which cleared a group of suspected terrorists to work as security guards, remember. You know, the government that includes Baroness Scotland, the cabinet minister fined for employing an illegal immigrant. At that rate, they'll probably staff the ISA with convicted child-molesters out on day-release, on the principle of poacher-turned-gamekeeper.
We are quite certain that it will become normal practice to ban anyone who has ever been accused of abuse, and that will mean that hundreds of teachers will no longer be able to work or drive each other's kids to school, because children do lie. It used to be a common saying that one should always believe a child who claims to have been abused, because they are unable to lie about something like this. Unfortunately this is total rubbish, as many teachers have found to their cost.
And please, please, please don't anyone claim that common-sense will rule and that we're all being paranoid. Common-sense hasn't ruled for the last ten years, and it ain't going to start now. It would be nice to think that an incoming Tory government will do away with this evil scheme, but let's all start writing to our Tory MP or Tory candidates and press them to make sure.
Or are we happy to remain what we have been branded by our own elected government, a nation of paedophiles?
The GOS says: I am involved with a group of railway enthusiasts who are restoring a historic steam locomotive. We recently turned down an application from a young man who was keen to come and get his hands dirty - because he's only fifteen and none of us old steam buffs was prepared to put our heads over the parapet and register with the ISA. So, job well done, the government. That's one young man saved from greasy fingerprints on his backside, or worse.
I wonder how he feels about it, though. I suspect he may not be exactly overwhelmed with gratitude.
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