crb

[Guest]

hello everyone hope you can help.

 

I have just recieved a renewed crb with a caution - what do I do now - I was not aware or made aware of this caution at any time.

 

what would you do if you were me.

[HappyMaz]

Hi maymay may, and welcome to the Forum!

 

At first I wasn't sure whether you meant this your own CRB or that of an employee!

 

I think a lot depends on the caution, what it was for and when the offence was committed. If this is a renewal of the CRB then this would suggest it is a fairly new development. What procedures do you have in place to ensure employees inform you of any offences, cautions and so on? If you have a policy/procedure and this has not been followed then you might need to invoke your disciplinary procedure, depending on the wording of the policy. If your policy says employees should notify you of offences/cautions which might make them unsuitable to work in the setting, then this might be open to debate as to whether this caution falls within this category.

 

From memory I think the 2012 EYFS tells employers that they must inform employees that they are required to inform them of any offences/cautions or any change in circumstances which might affect their suitability to work with children, however if your employees' terms and conditions do not provide for this I'm not sure there is much you can do in respect of the employee not informing you before you became aware.

 

However, if the offence in question makes your employee unfit to work with children then you have no option but to dismiss, I think. It is an offence to continue to employ a practitioner who you know to be unfit to work with children because of an offence/caution.

 

If the offence does not have any bearing on the practitioner's suitability to work with children and you are confident that the behaviour displayed during the committing of the offence will not affect their conduct in the workplace, then I'm not sure you have grounds for dismissal.

 

I would certainly set up a meeting with the practitioner to find out more information, and get advice from my LA/LSCB (and possibly ACAS in respect of employment law) before coming to any conclusions or decisions.

 

As a postscript, I know that the High Court has recently ruled that it is against a person's human rights to have to declare all offences during the CRB process and it is likely that at some point in the future, only a fairly narrow set of offences/cautions will need to be declared. It may be possible that under this future regime, this caution wouldn't have had to be declared at all.

 

Oh and one more thing: until you speak to the practitioner you can't be sure that this information is actually correct, so I would approach them with an open mind until they confirm or deny. Although that said, it is likely that they received their CRB at the same time as you received the notification, so they may already be quaking in their boots waiting for you to call them in!

 

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[flowlow]

Hi

 

We have it in our policy that employee must inform us of cautions.

 

However from recent experience I was totally amazed at what you can have on a CRB and it not affect you ability to work in the setting!!! This also impacts on whether you can dismiss as well, so please get advice from LADO and whoever you use for employment law xx

[SueJ]

As well as having it as part of policy documents staff have to sign a declaration on termly supervision documents and annual appraisal to say whether or not they have had any cautions etc since their last crb.