As with the requirement for all care home staff to be fully registered having played a part in the absence in Scotland of large scale sex grooming of children in care homes, in places such as Rochdale, so the above childcare paedophilia crisis across England seems to have been prevented by our Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme.

From BBC Bristol today and widely broadcast across the BBC, the above, and:

Serious concerns about a suspected paedophile childcare worker were ignored for months by nursery managers, a BBC investigation has been told.

A former employee at Partou King Street Nursery in Bristol says she alerted management to Nathan Bennett’s behaviour before it was discovered he had been abusing children.

Bessie Martin told bosses that Bennett would hold children for too long, she says, often sitting them on his lap out of view of CCTV. Her concerns were dismissed, she says, and she was told she was “imagining it”.

Bennett was sentenced to 30 years in prison in February for sexually abusing five boys aged two and three.

Partou has told the BBC it “actively encourages” reporting of concerns and has implemented recommendations to “strengthen safeguarding governance further and enhance oversight across the organisation”.¹

This is the second case in only one week.

The UK government is “urgently” reviewing a system used to keep young and vulnerable people safe after a BBC investigation revealed how a nursery worker arrested for downloading indecent images of children was able to get another childcare job.

Officials are now examining the case of Kristian Parry, who was later sentenced to two years in prison, to “address the issues” raised.

Parry’s arrest was not reflected via the Disclosure and Barring Service’s (DBS) Update system, which only searches for pre-conviction information every nine months, leaving potential employers unaware.

Parents at the nursery said the system was “not fit for purpose”. A senior politician described it as “fatally flawed”. ²

Why and how did the protection system against such abuses fail?

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) in England provides a point-in-time check. It catches prior convictions/barring but not unreported behaviour, grooming without records, or post-check offending. The Update Service is not fully real-time or automatic, unlike Scotland’s PVG scheme. Recent cases, such as Kristian Parry above, have highlighted delays in reflecting arrests/police information.

What is Scotland’s PVG?

The Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme helps ensure people who are unsuitable to work with children and protected adults cannot do regulated roles. It’s a five-year membership scheme. Disclosure Scotland continuously checks members’ criminal history information. It also keeps lists of people barred from regulated roles.³

There have been no equivalent recent example of publicized large-scale nursery staff abuse scandals in Scotland matching the English cases appearing in media reporting. We’d know about it, if there was the slightest whiff of one.

When was the Scottish PVG scheme launched and by whom?

The Scottish PVG (Protecting Vulnerable Groups) scheme was launched by the Scottish Government on 28 February 2011. It was established under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007, which received Royal Assent in 2007 and came into effect in stages, with the full membership scheme going live in 2011.

The scheme was Scotland’s response to the Bichard Inquiry, following the 2002 Soham murders in England. The inquiry recommended a registration scheme with continuous updating for people working with children and protected adults. The 2007 Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament during the first SNP minority government led by First Minister Alex Salmond.

This should be big news in Scotland because if it wes the other way round we’d never hear the end of it.

Sources:

1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c862jy76y21o
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c621zwn21xyohttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c621zwn21xyo
3. https://www.mygov.scot/apply-to-pvg-scheme