What is safer recruitment?
Safer recruitment is a set of practices to help make sure your staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children and young people. It is a vital part of creating a safe and positive environment and making a commitment to keep children safe from harm. Safer recruitment should be a continuing process of improvement for every school, club, business or organisation whose work or services involve contact with children.
Safer recruitment procedures
Our policy for safer recruitment is part of our overall safeguarding policy and is a vital first step towards keeping the children, who have contact with staff and volunteers, safe. We have clear procedures to ensure that everyone who is involved with any form of recruitment knows how to follow them. Procedures ensure that staff and volunteers are recruited safely and fairly, and that children’s safety is being considered at every stage of the process.
The recruitment processes
Taking a planned and structured approach will help, minimise the risk of appointing someone unsuitable, ensure we select the right person for the role, make sure the process is fair and make sure there are records of the process for future reference.
Define the role
For any role working with children and young people, both the job description and the person specification highlights the importance of understanding safeguarding issues.
Advertising the role
Advertisements send out a clear safeguarding message. Every advert for a role that includes work with children includes a statement about our commitment to keeping children safe. Positions require a DBS records check.
Applicant information pack
An application pack ensures that people interested in applying for a role at OLASP have all the information they need about our school and the advertised vacancy.
Self-disclosure form
A self-disclosure form gives candidates the opportunity to tell us confidentially about any unspent criminal convictions, child protection investigations or disciplinary procedures they have on their record. The role requires an enhanced criminal records check, so applicants are required to disclose any unprotected spent convictions and cautions. In England, Scotland and Wales, we can only ask for information about cautions or convictions which are not designated as ‘protected’ under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
Applicants should complete self-disclosure forms before interview and bring them in a separate, sealed envelope marked ‘Confidential’. Schools should only open the self-disclosure forms of candidates who have accepted a conditional offer and review the information inside as part of our vetting checks.
References. We ask applicants to provide the details of at least two referees and check references as part of our checks.
Interview. Interviews to recruit people to work with children are always conducted face-to-face.
Questions relate to items in the person specification and enable us to explore a candidate’s suitability to work with children, their attitude and their motivations for applying for the role.
During the interview candidates should show that they are able to: 1. establish and maintain professional boundaries and professional integrity, 2. establish and maintain relationships with children and 3. take action to protect a child.
Checking identity.
Check each candidate’s identity during the recruitment process. The first opportunity to do this is usually when the candidate attends an interview.