Kent Association for the Blind and CRB Checks for Volunteers

In a news item on 14th March on BBC News South East, KAB was criticised for carrying out unnecessary CRB checks for Volunteers. Here KAB's Chief Executive, Karen Osborn, responds to the item:

• KAB places the highest priority on the wellbeing of our sight impaired clients, who are often vulnerable and include children, people with learning difficulties and the elderly.
• The role of volunteer is hugely important for KAB. We have a magnificent team of over 900 volunteers who regularly go more than the extra mile to support our service users. Their work makes a tremendous difference to the lives of many of our visually impaired service users.
• We don't carry out CRB checks indiscriminately; we follow a risk-based approach that judges each role individually. For roles that we judge to be high risk – like befriending and home visiting – it's normal good practice to run a check. These volunteers are in positions of trust, they help to read peoples letters and so of course they have access to very private information, things like bank account details, legal documents and medical letters.
• Every month KAB gets back at least one CRB form with convictions not previously disclosed, which could leave a service user at risk. Recent checks have revealed convictions for theft, fraud, GBH and drugs offences. Clearly, in those cases it would not be good practice to allow those volunteers unsupervised access to a vulnerable blind client. Regardless of how long KAB has been working with a volunteer we feel it would be irresponsible to exempt anyone from this process. How could we reasonably decide who to check and who to leave out?
• We are truly sad that the Volunteer concerned felt very frustrated by the process. Our staff are trained to assist with CRB documentation and we make the process as simple as possible.
• But at the end of the day, when the well being of our clients is at stake, we would rather be too careful than not careful enough.