I was sacked from a nursery for children for gross misconduct due to safe guarding (child welfare) concern. Will this be on my next DBS check in UK?

Question

I used to work in nursery. I was sacked for gross misconduct for a safeguarding issue. The issue was referred to the Local Authority Designated Officer, Ofsted and the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

I now need an enhanced DBS check; will it be on there?

Answer 1

Absolutely 100% yes. The entire point of a DBS check is to be aware of incidents which need to be considered when someone may be placed in a position of trust over children (or vulnerable adults).

Make sure you have a very, very, very good explanation for your potential future employer as to what happened and why you should be trusted in future.

Answer 2

There are four kinds of Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks:

• a basic check, which shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions
• a standard check, which shows spent and unspent convictions and cautions
• an enhanced check, which shows the same as a standard check plus any information held by local police that’s considered relevant to the role
• an enhanced check with barred lists, which shows the same as an enhanced check plus whether the applicant is on the list of people barred from doing the role

(Information taken from https://www.gov.uk/dbs-check-applicant-criminal-record)

The DBS exists pretty much solely to provide this kind of information to employers of people who will be working with all kinds of vulnerable people. If they are holding information about you, I would expect it to come out on a check however reading this information it may depend on if they are conducting an Enhanced Check or and Enhanced Check with Barred Lists. Either way, the advice given in other comments is correct - either consult an employment lawyer or get an appointment with Citizens Advice immediately. This is too important to trust the word of strangers on the internet with.

Also, if your user name for StackExchange is anything like your real name, you may want to consider changing it. Anyone Google searching your name (as I would do for any new potential employees) would find this thread.

Answer 3

The first thing would be to get the information relevant for a DBS check. To do this, you will need to submit two requests:

• Request a copy of your criminal record, by asking for a "basic DBS check" (Request a basic DBS check).
• The "standard" and an "enhanced" DBS Check may supply an employer with additional information, in particular whether you are on a "barred list". To request this information, you must Make a subject access request to DBS.

Note that the "enhanced" DBS check may also contain information held by local police. You cannot request this information from the DBS However, you can use a "subject access request" to find out whether such information was supplied by DBS in the past. You may also be able to find this information by directly asking local police services.

If there is an entry about the safeguarding issue, you at least know where you stand. If you believe the entry is unjustified, you can fight it (see e.g. Report a problem about a criminal record check or barring decision). However, that is a different (probably complex) problem.

If you choose to accept the entry, you will then have to find out which jobs will (and are allowed to) still accept you. Consider asking a new question, once you know what your entry says.

Finally, as the other answers explain, this is a complex subject, so you should probably get qualified help, such as Citizens advice or legal assistance.

_{Includes info supplied by motosubatsu, Philip Kendall}