Volunteers play a vital role in enhancing the lives of vulnerable people. Recruiting or bringing new people into the organisation, whether as volunteers or into paid roles, is an opportunity to take a preventative approach to check whether they are safe and suitable to join you.
This means organisations have to adopt sound practices to help minimise risk. Good recruitment and selection practices include the use of application forms and checking references and qualifications, which should be detailed in your organisation's policies and procedures.
The use of Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks plays a part in your overall approach to safeguarding and your organisation's safer recruitment policy. There are rules about when it is appropriate to use DBS checks and if you’re not sure whether to carry out a check, you can use the DBS eligibility tool.
The Disclosure & Barring Service offers ‘identity checking guidelines’ on:
- how you can establish the true identity of an applicant through the examination of documents
- the documents required for volunteers from the UK, and those from overseas, and
- what you must do as part of the ID-checking process
We will be hosting an online ‘Safer Recruitment’ workshop with Carol Eland from the DBS Outreach Service on Tuesday 18 June 2024 at 1 pm, which is free to attend. If you are interested in attending this workshop please email safeguarding@wcva.cymru to register your interest.
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