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The Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) has been created to help prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults.

It is now a criminal offence for individuals barred by the ISA to work or apply to work with children or vulnerable adults in a wide range of posts - including most NHS jobs, Prison Service, education and childcare. Employers also face criminal sanctions for knowingly employing a barred individual across a wider range of work;

All organisations and bodies now have a duty to refer to the ISA, information about individuals working with children or vulnerable adults where they consider them to have caused harm or pose a risk of harm.

To enable the ISA to work effectively and ensure the relevant safeguards are in place, the Government has introduced a legal framework to manage legislative compliance that became enforceable with effect from October 12th 2009:

This framework established three key criteria for employers and employees (including managers of, and volunteers in, unpaid work) which are:

• For employers: you must not knowingly employ in "Regulated activity", or use as a volunteer, a barred person;
• For employers: if you dismiss or cease using a person in Regulated Activity because you think they harmed or pose a risk of harm to children or vulnerable adults, you must refer the case to the Independent Safeguarding Authority.
• For employees: if you yourself are barred from regulated activity, you must not work, or seek to work, in Regulated Activity from which you are barred, otherwise you will be committing an offence.

Regulated Activtiy is now defined as:

• Activity involving contact with children or vulnerable adults and is of a specified nature (e.g. teaching, training, care, supervision, advice, medical treatment or in certain circumstances transport) on a frequent, intensive and/or overnight basis;
• Activity involving contact with children or vulnerable adults in a specified place (e.g. schools, care homes etc), frequently or intensively;
• Fostering and childcare;
• Certain specified positions of responsibility (e.g. school governor, director of children's services, director of adult social services, trustees of certain charities).

Criteria for frequently, intensively and/or overnight is now defined as:

• Frequently is currently defined as 'once a week' for most services, except for health and social care services which involves personal care when it is 'once a month or more'
• Intensively takes place on '4 days in one month or more'
• Overnight takes place between 2-6 a.m

For further details of "Regulated Activity" please follow the link below to the Business Link website.

www.businesslink.gov.uk/CRB-checks

For further details please do feel free to contact us if you would like to talk through these changes and how they might affect your organisation.