I agree, it's quite ludicrous - it's the flip-side of demonising children by demonising adults.

On a more personal note, I also wonder what effect this might have on SF conventions, which *gasp* children have been known to attend...

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Thinking about it, purely hypothetically of course, a hotel-based convention is probably a situation where my teenage boy would be more at risk than anything else he does, were there to be someone lurking with malicious intent.

Lots of people around, both of us doing different things, bedrooms, alcohol to spike his drink...?

In which case, he is most effectively protected by knowing, as he has done since an early age, through calm and reasoned explanations; that there are some, very few people, who will do unpleasant and intimate things to children if they get the chance; that this is wrong and not to be allowed; that you don't go off with anyone you don't know, even for sweets or puppies; even if it's someone you do know, if someone touches you up, you kick and scream and raise merry hell; that you won't be in any kind of trouble, whatever the person trying to do this might say.

As opposed to, say, some kid whose parents don't want to ruin their innocence by talking about icky things and who prefer to rely on a bureaucratic process which, from one point of view, only proves someone hasn't (yet) been caught doing wrong.

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I also wonder what effect this might have on SF conventions

None at all, it would seem.

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Can't read that, it's f-locked but have read your other posts on the subject (and followed your links to the relevant websites) - thanks for the sanity check.

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D'oh! Sorry. To summarize, the_magician has been in touch with the relevant authorities and has written confirmation that this doesn't apply to cons.

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Alas, it sounds as if you lot have caught the USA-disease of crazy overprotection. It really bothers me how adult men especially are treated -- as you say -- as if the prevailing opinion which once held that men were by nature fatherly and patriarchal (leaving aside the exceptions who weren't) has now been replaced by some weird gender idea that "men" do not "like to be around children" unless they are, you know, perverted. What happened to responsible adulthood?

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I had the same thought on the money front, I ahve to say. This seems to me like both an overreaction and an attempt to be seen to be doing something, rather than a genuine concern. I'm waiting to see what the SoA have to say, too.

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Not my country, but I have been following also comments from communicator, here and here.

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I'm not going to apply for a CRB check -- ever.

Reason: not because I'm guilty of anything. (My sum total of negative interaction with the law over the past 44 years has amounted to two speeding tickets, the most recent over 5 years ago.)

No. Nor am I outraged at the privacy thing.

Rather: Haven't these ass-hats heard of FALSE POSITIVES?

Some studies show that as many as 20% of database records held by government agencies contain errors, ranging from typos to full-blown horror stories. (Here's a concrete example: feorag recently discovered that our GP's medical records showed her as having been born in Canada, rather than in a hospital in Manchester. Imagine the fun that will ensue if/when the idiots in Whitehall enforce record sharing between the NHS and the Immigration Agency ...! Hopefully they're not that stupid, but who can tell?)

If your name and date of birth are the same as someone with heavy criminal record, a CRB check could label you as a bad guy. If your social security number is one digit transposition away from $BAD_GUY, see above. If the previous owner of your house was a child abuser, see above. If your street address is one letter/digit away from a street address occupied by ...

Are we getting the picture yet?

I reckon the CRB will be returning many more false positives than true positives, because it's a smeary process -- they're looking in multiple places for evidence of misbehaviour, and the more places they look in, the more likely they are to stumble across corrupt database records that are superficially incriminating.

So I'm not going near that thing with a barge-pole, lest I be branded a crook. (Even though my name is unique within the UK, my current address's previous owner was a junior judge, and I'm not a convicted criminal.)

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Ahh but then because you are the sole person without a CRB check, you MUST be guilty ;-)

Guilty until proven innocent. That's Britain's new mantra. Didn't you get the memo?

I'm waiting for the day when new parents get their children taken off them because they didn't get a CRB check done whilst pregnant.

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What we, as a society, should teach men is to have loving, responsible relationships with their children, and, for that matter, with *all* children.

Ian Huntley was the partner of a well-beloved teaching assistant, and AFAIK the two girls went to visit her. (Which one can say was inappropriate behaveiour, but is the kind of idea children that age might have.) And nobody in the world can say whether they would have entered the flat with only him there if they *hadn't* known him, because a) he could have said, 'oh, she's just out to the shops, just come in', and b) if he hadn't been a school caretaker he might still have picked her up from school and been with her in town and been at home if they had previously visited her - in other words, he could have seemed like a 'safe' person to them. Which most people are.

The tragic conclusion is that if he hadn't been 'working at a school' he would still have been a school teacher's partner and known much about the kids and the kids' habits, and would still, in all likelyhood, have had an opportunity to commit a crime against a child. Under the circumstances, he should have been picked up on - but in the end, I don't think it made much difference :-(((

Phillip Pullman is going to speak on Radio 2 (Jeremy Vine Show) today between 12 and 2 - probably in the second hour - so that should be interesting (and on iPlayer for a week).

You can't on the one hand demonize all adults, particularly men, and on the other complain that far too few men are applying to be primary school teachers. Or that men aren't involved enough in the education of their children, particularly if they have separated from the mothers. If a father sits on a bench watching children in the playground, he gets suspicious looks. Should he hire a female escort so he can watch his own child? Or will he just stop bothering after a while because he does not want to be given the third degree every time he goes to the park?

As far as I can make out, the danger to children is exactly the same as ten, twenty, fifty, and quite possibly a hundred years ago. People are just that much more afraid, and are using that fear to constrict and constrain children. And then complain about the overweight computer generation.

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I don't need to be taught how to have a loving, responsible relationship with my children. I got that from my parents. If you don't believe me, ask my kids - or any of the other kids I have had the delight of helping at various Sunday Schools and Youth Drama Groups over the years.

On the other hand, while I was the 'at home' parent for my children (made redundant as a bank manager, you know) the more bourgeois, lady wot lunches, the women I had anything to do with the more suspicion I was regarded with. Didn't fit the stereotype I suppose.

Want to know who is most likely to abuse children? Their relatives. Hard cases - Huntley - make bad laws.

I'm with Charlie. I wouldn't trust the CRB to get a simple majority of their records correct, even if they were subject to the Data Protection Act, from which I believe they are specifically excluded.

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And those Sunday School and Drama Club kids will have had you as a positive role model, as they observe interactions between males and females of a range of ages and develop the appropriate social skills.

Where's that social education going to come from if current trends accelerate?

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Hmm. I have been looking at the Independent Safeguarding Authority's website, to see what the facts are. I have to say, I can't find anything in the list of regulated or controlled activities that covers a supervised individual making a one-off visit to a school. This seems to be what Pullman et al. are complaining about, so I'm not sure that their complaint is valid.

Furthermore, whilst your current CRB checks won't transfer, and you will have to register with the ISA for voluntary work with children, (1) it's a one-off registration, and you wouldn't have to do it again, and (2) the ISA say they will not be charging volunteers.

Edited at 2009-07-16 12:14 pm (UTC)

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This story contains responses from the Home Office and Department of Children, Schools and Families. These make explicit that only people who go into schools more than once a month need register, and from what is said about concerns about people forming relationships of trust with children, I would infer that this means more than once a month into the same school. So the vast majority of people who do the sort of individual visits into schools that writers do won't be affected.

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knee, meet jerk

this 'if it saves the life of just one child' paranoia is particularly annoying when the vast majority of abuse is by people who already know the child; a passing visitor isn't quite the same. And my school life would have been immeasurably poorer if people like Gavin Ewart, Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes hadn't spoken there; not sure if Hughes would have passed a vetting process!

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I don't know where I land on this one. It must be different in Scotland. I had to do this thing called a Disclosure which cost around £30 (I think) when I started volunteering at a school. I also had to fill in a Disclosure when I started working at an employment agency. Even though I was supervised all the time I was at the school, I felt happy to be disclosed (and have a feeling that all the authors who are registered with the Live Literature Scotland scheme are also disclosed). However, I felt the employment agency was invading my privacy. I see your hard cases - I have a feeling that the whole disclosure thing started after the Dunblane massacre - and can understand Pullman's point of view and yours about the cost (£64!) but do think that there is a need for some kind of check for people who work with children. But then I also have the idea that my husband the policeman also had to be disclosed to get his job and its just become part of working in the public sector in Scotland.

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There really are no easy answers, are there?

I think we would all agree that there must be checks for anyone who's going to have close, prolonged and one-on-one contact with kids and vulnerable adults.

Fr'instance, I want to know that staff taking my kids on a school staying-away field trip are checked, ditto any helping parents, and the same goes for Scout camps etc.

Yes, from stuff I've read, Dunblane is/was a factor in all this.

Incidentally, I think it's worth remembering that whatever-his-name-was there had already been binned by the Scout Association for his odd/suspect behaviour. And IIRC, there were other previous incidents on his record which if they had been followed up according to already existing legislation, his opportunity to committ that mass-murder would have been at very least severely curbed. The same goes for Soham.

An awful lot of the problems with this CRB/ISA start where something's presented in the kind of vague terms I heard on the news last night - like 'anyone who has regular contact with children'. Like what? Toyshop employees?

No, obviously not. Further on, that's defined as "regular" or "intense" contact with children or vulnerable adults - "Regular" is defined as more than once a month and "intense" as three times a month or more, the Home Office says, apparently.

So, actually, as Swisstone has already usefully pointed out, nothing really has changed, for visiting authors.

Until they come across someone in a school or LEA who hadn't read up all the detail and is relying on what they recall from the headlines and demands this certificate.

Like the woman who demanded a whole bunch of us writers make a round trip - in my case of over 300 miles - to present our original ID and other documents for a full CRB check, on our own time and at our own cost, with the subsequent visit (and fee...) dependent on clearance coming through in time.

That nearly scuppered the whole event - not because we felt insulted but because we really were not prepared to spend that time and money on applying for clearance for one day, that might not even come through in time. These can take months.

Fortunately, we got the school governor with child protection responsibilities involved, who did know the correct rules, and all was well.

And then there's the fact that this check isn't a Magic Scroll of Protection, which some people do seem to think. Presumably that repellent crew who were taking vile photos of kids at that nursery were all checked beforehand?

A gymnastics coach I know considers a CRB check as merely proof 'a wrong'un hasn't been caught yet' and continues to be as vigilant as ever for anyone showing undue interest in little girls in leotards.

While taking great pains to make it clear to suspicious parents that he's putting his hands on their daughter's hips, bum, torso, not because it gives him a thrill, but because that's how he keeps them safe and teaches them balance and skills on the barre, vaulting horse, whatever.

Other coaches he knows have just given up.

It's really a very complex and complicated issue - and not helped when solutions are presented in simplistic terms with no apparent understanding of the major PR problems that already exist.

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