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Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board has today published a serious case review into abuse at Little Stars Nursery in 2010.

Source: Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board published on this site Tuesday 27th August 2013 by Jill Powell

Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board has today published a serious case review into abuse at Little Stars Nursery in 2010. Paul Wilson, an assistant at the nursery, was jailed for 13½ in July 2011 after pleading guilty to raping a child in the nursery. He also admitted 47 counts of grooming of teenage girls over the internet.

The Review found that it was known by the nursery, Ofsted and the local authority that Wilson had a ‘special relationship’ with the child which should have raised the alarm and been examined in more detail.

Jane Held, Independent Chair of the multi-agency Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board said: “Responsibility for this awful abuse must, and does, lie with the perpetrator. He was clever, duplicitous and manipulative and took advantage of weaknesses in the system.

Parents should be able to trust the people they leave their children with to ensure that children are properly protected. In this case there were unfortunately a number of weaknesses in the way that nursery was run and a number of opportunities to intervene earlier and prevent the continuation of abuse.”

She added that “There are three key lessons arising from this review. One is that those in charge of settings caring for children must ensure there are strong clear practices and systems to minimise the risk of abuse .The second is to listen to and ask about children’s experiences directly with them rather than just speak to adults. The third, and potentially the most important, is that safeguarding children is a job for everyone, and every single person who looks after or cares for children needs to know how to recognise when something is not right and what to do about it, and have confidence they will get the right response when they do act.“

To read the full serious case review click http://www.lscbbirmingham.org.uk/images/stories/downloads/executive-summaries/Published_Overview_Report.pdf

From 29 May 2013, the DBS will be removing certain specified old and minor offences from criminal record certificates issued from this date.

DBS will be removing certain specified old and minor offences from criminal record certificates.

Source Disclosure and Baring Service (DBS) published on this site Wednesday May 29th 2013 by Jill Powell

Changes to the legislation were introduced today to allow changes being made to convictions and cautions being filtered.

NB In line with these changes, question e55 has been amended on the DBS application form for a criminal record check. These changes will be outline on the following news item.

Details on what is filtering and the rules in place now are:

What does ‘filtering’ mean?

Filtering is the term that the DBS is using to describe the process which will identify and remove convictions and cautions which should no longer be disclosed on DBS certificates due to changes to legislation.

What will be shown on a DBS certificate?

Standard and Enhanced DBS certificates will include details of convictions and cautions (including youth cautions, reprimands and warnings) recorded on the Police National Computer (PNC).

In addition to information from the PNC, an Enhanced certificate may also include information taken from police records that a chief officer of a police force considers relevant to the application and/or details of whether an individual is included on one or both of our two lists barring people from working with children and/or vulnerable adults.

Some PNC information will now be filtered and will not appear on the certificate. Cautions and convictions filtered out are set out in legislation.

What PNC information will be filtered from inclusion on a certificate?

The rules as to when a conviction or caution will be filtered are set out in legislation. This states that a certificate must include the following:

 Cautions relating to an offence from a list agreed by Parliament– link at end

 Cautions given less than 6 years ago (where individual over 18 at the time of caution)

 Cautions given less than 2 years ago (where individual under 18 at the time of caution)

 Convictions relating to an offence from a prescribed list – link at end

 Where the individual has more than one conviction all convictions will be included on the certificate (no conviction will be filtered)

 Convictions that resulted in a custodial sentence (regardless of whether served)

 Convictions given less than 11 years ago (where individual over 18 at the time of conviction)

 Convictions given less than 5.5 years ago (where individual under 18 at the time of conviction)

The list includes a range of offences which are serious and which relate to sexual offending, violent offending and/or safeguarding. It would never be appropriate to filter offences on this list. A list of offences which will never be filtered has been derived from the legislation.

This is not the complete list as the legislation also extends to cover similar offences committed under the law of Scotland and Northern Ireland or under laws relevant to the armed services.

To access the list click https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dbs-list-of-offences-that-will-never-be-filtered-from-a-criminal-record-check

To see the full details of what has changed and what has not changed click and is available here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dbs-list-of-offences-that-will-never-be-filtered-from-a-criminal-record-check

See news “Changes made to Disclosure and Baring Service (DBS) application for criminal checks” form posted today