Paul, I'm not sure what the answer to this is, but in several EU countries it is possible to obtain by simple request an extract of the criminal record of a person (for instance, in France an "extrait de casier judicuaire"). This document will be blank for many people. The logistics are interesting but not always surmountable.
I'm interested to hear what those who know something about this subject have to say.

In reply to Ray:

Ray, this one of my specialist areas, I'm actually interested in if people are actually doing these checks as in my experience they are not widely being done and there is a lot of what I call naive ignorance, hence why I call it an elephant in the room. It can be a difficult subject to bring up, in the post Brexit environment as some people seem to link these checks as some sort of measure to control migration.

In reply to Paul:

As you say Paul, it will be interesting to see what people are actually doing......

In schools (where I work) we do thorough overseas checks, but recognise that for some countries the access is limited or the records incomplete. The government has a useful area of their website setting out the process for each country, and how possible/reliable that information might be. www.gov.uk/.../criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

If we can't get a police check for a period spent abroad, we sometimes take up additional references and do a risk assessment based on the missing information.

Having said all this, as a school we made the decision to do overseas checks for anyone who had lived or worked abroad after the age of 18, for more than 3 months. The guidance we are given doesn't say how far back you have to go - suggesting five years as a minimum I believe. We've decided to go back as far as we can - a decision reinforced by reading the serious case review for William Vahey. It's very hard to stomach, but I think it should be required reading for anyone involved in vetting people to work with children, so you have a clear idea of how important this work is. www.rbkc.gov.uk/.../Southbank SCR REPORT 12 1 16.pdf

In reply to Nina Waters:

Absolutely Nina, I know of a private company that is involved in education and healthcare and when I brought up the subject of OPC's I was told, "Oh, are they not expensive to get?" which basically said to me that they were hardly ever done and actually the main expense is getting them checked and verified but that pales into insignificance when what they can prevent. I would like to think that the Local Authorities Schools HR service is switched on to this and it is something I am looking into, but I also wonder how many nurseries, care home and hospitals have staff who haven't been checked properly

In reply to Paul:

Hi Paul, I can only offer anecdotal evidence from my own experience as an employee from an EU country who has also lived in another EU country prior to coming to the UK. I work in social care with vulnerable adults. I've worked for two different social care trusts in England and neither have asked me to produce anything from my country of origin or the one where I lived for 2.5 years. In my second job, I had a casual chat about this one time with our area manager, and he said that they do not ask anyone for anything other than a UK DBS. My UK DBS checks have come back in the same time as those of British people, so I really don't think overseas records were checked at all.

I was quite surprised, to be honest, that I have never at any point been asked for anything, and both of my employers have been perfectly happy with just the standard UK enhanced DBS. I was especially surprised about this the first time, as by that point I'd only been in the UK for about 7 months. I never made a secret out of this and it was clear from my CV and work history that I've only quite recently arrived and have lived in two different countries in the past. For all they knew, I might have done all sorts of horrible things in my previous jobs and/or life, and that might have been the reason I left, and was now on the lookout for more vulnerable people to abuse (obviously I have a clear criminal record in all 3 countries and a clear conscience, but that's not the point).

This is stark contrast with my first move, when I applied to work with children and could not go anywhere near anyone vulnerable before the authorities had all the information from the police in my country of origin and were satisfied that it was safe to employ me. They had very strict policies when it came to applicants from abroad. It meant a delay of about 2 weeks to my start date, but in my opinion it's better to be safe than sorry and safeguarding children or vulnerable adults should be a priority.

I suspect the only way to make employers do these checks is to make them compulsory and have the relevant regulator (CQC for us) check that organisations who take care of vulnerable people have done them for anyone who's not from the UK or has spent significant time abroad even if they are British. Otherwise, with the constant staffing pressures that health and social care or education are under, employers are just going to decide to not incur the extra cost and wait another few weeks before the employee can start work.

In reply to Ray:

Yes, I require them for the Academy I work for but many of my new recruits are surprised to be asked to provide this as wasn’t required at their previous setting. Always been baffled by what I call the 5 year myth....no where in the KCSIE guidance is any timeline given. Yet the ‘norm’ seems to be that if a person has been in the UK for 5 years, an overseas check isn’t required.

In reply to Kätlin:

That's so worrying Katlin - when you factor the number of vulnerable people that could be affected by the lack of proper checks, it makes me furious. The systems that are in place for schools are absolutely driven by regulation, and an appropriate fear of the consequences of failure. If the same regulations aren't yet in place for care homes/social care settings, they really must be.

In reply to Sasha:

Our MAT dived into this a bit a few years ago (before my time) and it turns out the NSPCC were one of the organisations quoting the 5 year rule and when we (along with a other London schools) pursued this they couldn't find a source and removed it.

We're similar to Nina in that we go all the way back to age 18, however, are met with resistance from agencies and contractors either not doing this or sticking to the 5 year rule.

The issue is the KCSIE doc says "should" not "must" and until it becomes mandatory we are unable to enforce it.

Having come from a background working to BS7858 standard I find schools vetting very relaxed, although, my colleagues who have worked here for years think it's very thorough and don't like that I am asking for risk assessments and 5 years of references instead of the normal 2 (which is also a "should" not a "must" by the way!).

What I find scary also is we have a consultant who is an "expert" in guiding schools through Ofsted, and she sat with me and our SCRs and went down the RTW column and anyone without a "british passport" she said we needed an overseas check for. When I informed her this was discriminatory and we had a number of "british" workers who had lived/worked overseas and some non-british passport holders who were born in the UK and never lived/worked abroad her answer was "well you wouldn't want to go up against Ofsted with that". Needless to say she did not like my answer nor myself anymore as I didn't accept her knowledge as gospel!

My experience is you must undergo more checks to be a shop security guard than to work with vulnerable people, including children, in the UK.

In reply to Kimberly:

It's illogical isn't it? Our policy used to be 5 years, but it didn't make any sense to only be interested in recent past. So we changed it, but like you find that lots of our applicants are bemused when they've worked in schools for years but not had to produce checks for periods they've spent abroad.

The other change we made (again light of the Vahey case) was to always require a check from the country of origin if they lived there after the age of 18, even if the person never worked there. As I recall in that case, there was an offence in the USA during his student years that would have ruled him out of employment with children, but because he hadn't worked there, the checks had never covered it.

In reply to Nina Waters:

Vahey had a 90-day prison sentence for child sex offences (molesting) and was put on the Californian sex offenders register, the FBI who were going to arrest at the time of his death said that if any employer around the world had bothered to check with US Authorities through their embassies would have found out about Vahey being a convicted paedophile.

In reply to Sasha:

I'm a school governor and although the school I am involved with uses the LEA Schools HR Service, I will be asking to make sure they are and the Head Teacher is up to speed on this.

In reply to Kätlin:

Thanks for that, very insightful and it does back up my understanding of the situation.

In reply to Nina Waters:

We do the same - it's any country lived or worked in from the age of 18 for 28 days or more. We ask all successful candidates to complete a declaration asking for this information and go from there. The government doc is our go to but have found some information isn't up to date. Interestingly it's countries like USA and Canada where we have the most trouble, whereas India and Pakistan turn their checks around in a matter of days.

With most things, we can only be as good as the information we have but we can show we tried as best we could to make the most informed decision we could. A DBS is only as good as the day it's checked and if the person has been caught!

We once had a candidate who, at interview, told us about his teaching abroad and then when it came to filling the declaration out said he had never worked abroad - turns out he didn't want the hassle of obtaining an overseas check!

In reply to Kimberly:

I have had to read this bit several times "she sat with me and our SCRs and went down the RTW column and anyone without a "british passport" she said we needed an overseas check for. When I informed her this was discriminatory and we had a number of "british" workers who had lived/worked overseas and some non-british passport holders who were born in the UK and never lived/worked abroad her answer was "well you wouldn't want to go up against Ofsted with that". Needless to say she did not like my answer nor myself anymore as I didn't accept her knowledge as gospel!"

It is irrespective of what passport the person holds, only that they have spent an amount of time outside the UK that needs checking, and you seem to highlight a problem which is all too common in HR and why these checks are not be carried out properly, people are in the misguided opinion that OPC's are discriminatory. A lot of this belief comes from blind misguided adoption of political correctness, and you only have to look at the Rotherham scandal to see what happens when the authorities get it wrong when they adopted by group think failed Marxist ideology that political correctness is. Note I never said there was anything wrong with ED&I which is entirely different to officials who won't deal with a problem and in some cases aid and abet criminal activity because they are too scared of being called out as racist and adopt a culture of turning a blind eye. Hope that isn't too controversial?