Are Nursery Staff DBS Checked?
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) allows employers to make informed decisions about prospective staff in the recruitment stage, prior to hiring them. This can mean that their customers, other staff, and the business itself, is protected against risk. However, some job roles, involve looking after the most vulnerable members of society: children, and vulnerable adults. So, for a member of staff working in a nursery looking after children, it is essential that have a very specific type of DBS Check. This article will explore this in more detail.
There are different levels of DBS Check: Basic, Standard, Enhanced, and Enhanced with Barred Lists. A Basic DBS would just show unspent convictions. Standard and Enhanced DBS Checks show spent and unspent convictions, cautions, official warnings, and reprimands. Enhanced Checks also ask the local police force for any address in the past 5 years, whether they hold any information on the applicant that is relevant to the job role. The final type of check is an Enhanced DBS with Barred Lists, which checks if people are barred from working with children or vulnerable adults.
What Level of DBS is Required for Someone Working in a Nursery?
An Enhanced DBS with Barred List is required for anyone working or volunteering in a nursery. It is mandatory and a legal requirement. This type of DBS check can take up to 6 weeks to be received, but sometimes this can occur more quickly. If someone has a complicated address history for the past 5 years, it could take longer. This level of DBS Check would be required for childminders, nannies, a director of a children’s home, a childminder assistant, or the owner of a playgroup. If you run an organisation that looks after children, or work with children directly, you need an Enhanced DBS Check with Barred List before starting work.
What DBS Check do Childminders Need?
To be a childminder, looking after children in your own home, you would need an Enhanced DBS Check with Barred List. This would also be required for anyone who lives in the home with you, i.e., a partner, or any children aged 16 years old and over. If you have anyone who will volunteer to help; or anyone in your house at the same time as the children, such as cleaners, everyone who may be near the children, needs an Enhanced DBS Check with Barred List.
DBS Update Service
DBS offer an update service at a cost of just £13 per year. This would mean that if anything changes, your DBS Certificate is automatically updated. This is very useful for employers, because essentially the DBS Certificate is only really accurate, the day it’s produced. Ever after that a person ‘could’ commit a crime, that wouldn’t come to light until the next time they have a DBS Check; but the DBS Update Service would continually update this. There is no need to keep completing checks every two to three years, because it’s always updated, providing the annual fee is paid. It is useful to do because Ofsted will require updated DBS Checks. The cost of the update fee is cheaper than a brand-new DBS Certificate.
Anyone who wants to do nursery work or become a childminder, will definitely require an Enhanced DBS Check with Barred List.
