Referral
Now there is a catch 22.
Today, they’ve told me they can’t come to a decision. Even van driving jobs need DBS clearance.
What is DBS? You can see it under the “caseworker”‘s signature: “Disclosure and Barring Service.”
So there’s a “service” that runs around “disclosing” i.e. gossiping tattling ratting accusing whining pointing to prospective employers, and is in charge of “barring” the people it gossips about?
Seriously???
And in case that’s not bad enough they can also say “Soz we haven’t done you yet, maybe next month, kthanxbye.”
Really???
@Ophelia:
Yes, indeed there is. If you want a job working with vulernable people (children, autistic adults, etc), then your prospective employer asks the DBS service about you. They then check police records to see if you have a conviction for (for example) sexual assault.
The standard DBS check is just of convictions. An “enhanced” check can include stuff that didn’t go to court (e.g. rape complaints recorded on the police computer that never went to prosecution).
I don’t know the full details of what they can and can’t disclose, but it would seem that “refused to use pronouns” was not among the intended uses. As with everything else, the system is vulernable to entryism by activists.
Yes, DBS itself is benign, and valuable – I volunteer at a primary school, and have been DBS checked (even though I doubt I’ll ever be alone with children at the school, it’s possible a child might, for some reason, choose to privately confide something to me that I may need to share with the authorities – and honestly if I were a parent I’d feel better knowing every adult on the premises has been vetted). It’s supposed to be a safeguarding process, to keep people who may potentially harm vulnerable people from gaining access to them. But as we’ve seen in many places, including in the House of Commons recently, the meanings of the words ‘safe’ and ‘harm’ have been distorted beyond recognition.
Interesting. I don’t think we have that in the US – employers do what are called “background checks” which I’ve always assumed covered things like potentially harming vulnerable people.
The equivalent in New Zealand is ‘Police Vetting’, which just means they look up their database to see if you’ve come to their attention for anything that would cause concern to whoever requested the review.
The Enhanced DBS can go much, much further. Arrested but not charged, cautions, even interviews under caution (even not being a suspect) are recorded. Driving offences (speeding etc.) can appear.
It can also go deeper: contact former employers, check present and past addresses, so yes, gossip and personnel records can be examined.
Several government bodies (i.e. health, education, emergency services) regard not using pronouns as requested by an individual a serious safeguarding issue, and can result in disciplinary procedures or dismissal. It is no surprise the DBS was consulted: it can be used to destroy someone’s career but then also make them virtually unemployable (too many jobs need DBS, from taxi driving to social work). Not being able to produce a clean DBS is sufficient for many companies or public bodies to withdraw job offers. This is a very heavy handed way of bringing employees into line. Only an employer can refer to DBS, not an individual, so scaring others into compliance. I have seen first hand the damage a referral can do to a colleague: disciplinary, job loss and career gone. There is no appeal, no way back. And the DBS itself appears to have no one monitoring it, it can do what it wants and take as long as it wants.
Worse, many companies make a job applicant pay for the DBS check, in advance, but then add an ‘admin fee’ with a massive mark up. (I have seen 300%.) However the DBS in many cases cannot be transferred to another employer, and that means sometimes having to spend a lot of money or have a large deduction from the first wage slip.
In the UK, vetting is for police, prison and armed forces and goes into even greater depth (financial records, family history, relatives).
Freeminder is right that the DBS system (though laudable in principle) can easily get draconian and be misused.
This is one of the pernicious aspects of the UK police’s concept to a “non-crime hate incident”, as made famous by the case of Harry Miller, Limerick Criminal. This concept (invented by the police, not Parliament) means that somebody has made a complaint against you and called you hateful.
That can be recorded on the police computer, and then, in principle, it could be “disclosed” as part of an “enhanced” DBS check. Though whether it would be then (I think) comes down to the judgement of the police officer dealing with the DBS check as to whether it is “relevant” to the job being sought.
Both the UK courts and the UK government have told the police to stop recording “non-crime hate incidents” but the police are ignoring them.
In principle you could challenge any of this in court, if it affected your job search, but the problem is you might not even know about it.
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