Charities 'strangled' by red tape
checks on volunteers
Charities and churches are being "strangled" by red
tape that requires even grandmothers to get criminal record checks to
work in church creches, says a report this week.
The Better Regulation Task Force, whose members are
appointed by the Government, says care homes are having to build rooms
to a certain size even though autistic adults prefer smaller spaces.
Under new rules, 40,000 bell ringers in Church of
England churches also have to undergo criminal record checks every three
years. New bell ringers have to go through an eight point application
process including providing two referees, being interviewed and vetted
by the Criminal Record Bureau.
In other areas of the voluntary and community sector,
people are spending hours filling in duplicate forms rather than doing
their job.
A Task Force spokesman said: "Voluntary and community
organisations are often regulated by more than one body and find they
are being asked for the same information, in a slightly different
format, from each of them.
"For example most use agency staff to fill gaps.
Agency staff must be CRB checked.
"If the agency staff member likes the charity and
applies to work there permanently then the CRB certification is not
transferable. The process has to be gone through again and the fee paid
again."
The Task Force highlights the case of Sunday school
volunteers at a small church in West Sussex.
"New regulations mean that two adults must be in
attendance at all times," the report says. "The volunteers must produce
three character references.
"One of the women is a lecturer at Guildford Law
College and mother to two teenage boys. The other is a grandmother of
more than 70 years of age with four grandchildren who has never had to
prove her character to anyone, and found the process difficult and
stressful.
"She would have decided against volunteering once
these hurdles became apparent but her friend asked her to persevere
otherwise the Sunday school would have to be cancelled.
"Yet very often the only two children in the Sunday
school are this grandmother's own grandchildren."
The Voluntary and Community Sector is a major employer
with over 569,000 workers and a further 16 million volunteers.
Its role in social and health care is likely to
increase rapidly over the next 10 years, with the Government introducing
a new Task Force to expand the role of voluntary sector organisations in
providing NHS services.
The spokesman said: "If the health service is to
harness the potential of the sector to improve services, then the
Government must make it a priority to free the sector from the overly
burdensome red tape and bureaucracy it faces and allow it to innovate,
evolve and truly flourish.
"Of course regulation is needed to prevent bad people
from doing bad things but it needs also to be proportionate,
accountable, consistent, targeted and transparent."
The Task Force makes a series of recommendations
including "lighter touch and more flexible regulation".
It says one chief executive of a charity told how one
of her volunteers had been unable to take a mentally ill adult to a
football match because he was going with his wife who had not been CRB
checked. The Task Force also recommends that more be done to reduce the
VAT burden for charities.
Sarah Womack
1 November 2005
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