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Safer Recruitment Through Better Recruitment
Guidance in relation to staff working in social care and social work settings
Ministerial Foreword
Working with vulnerable people in our society can bring great rewards, both to the service user and to those people providing the service. It also places a great responsibility on employers to ensure that the people providing these vital services are suited to the task.
Scottish Ministers have set out the high-level vision for children and young people in Scotland. A key pillar of this is ensuring that children are safe from harm. Ministers are also committed to affording appropriate protection for Scotland's adult population.
Through legislation to protect vulnerable groups, the Scottish Executive is already showing its commitment to helping employers ensure that unsuitable staff do not gain access to children or protected adults. The vetting and barring scheme, which the Executive aims to introduce, will be one additional way of supporting effective safer recruitment practice. However, we are clear that safer recruitment should not stop at this.
Safer recruitment is also about employers properly examining the competency, experience, qualifications and attitudes of potential staff in relation to work with vulnerable people. It is therefore incumbent upon employers to have a range of safer recruitment and selection practices in place. Experience is showing that this can not only produce benefits in terms of safety but also in terms of the quality of staff.
The Scottish Social Services Council Code of Practice for Employers and the National Care Standards set out what is expected of social work and social care employers in terms of safer recruitment. However, we expect that employers will not only work towards these requirements but under the principles of continuous improvement, work over time to raise standards further in relation to those working with the most vulnerable people. This document will help employers, not only to meet existing standards, but to move beyond them over time.
Though this document has been designed for the social care and social work sectors in particular, employers in all sectors who take on people to work with vulnerable people should consider their safer recruitment practice and may find this document useful in this process. The Executive will therefore consider how we can support employers across all sectors in this regard.
Although safe recruitment can never be an exact science, it is only through a rigorous and consistent use of the kinds of methods set out in this document that we can afford the level of protection which vulnerable people deserve. I would therefore commend it to you.
Robert Brown MSP
Deputy Minister for Education and Young People
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