Background
The Bichard Report was published on 22 June 2004 and made 31 recommendations, of which recommendation 19 called for a new registration scheme and stated:
"New arrangements should be introduced requiring those who wish to work with children, or vulnerable adults, to be registered. This register – perhaps supported by a card or licence – would confirm that there is no known reason why an individual should not work with these client groups. The new register would be administered by a central body, which would take the decision, subject to published criteria, to approve or refuse registration on the basis of all the information made available to them by the police and other agencies. The responsibility for judging the relevance of police intelligence in deciding a person’s suitability would lie with the central body"
Of note in this recommendation is the use of the double-negative, "no known reason why an individual should not work with these client groups". This to say the ISA from its inception was not designed to clear individuals as "suitable" for work with vulnerable groups but to remove those who pose a known risk.
Proposals to implement the recommendations were put to public consultation on 5 April 2005. The results of this exercise were announced by the Rt Hon Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State of the Department for Education and Skills, on 19 January 2006 and were translated into primary legislation, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, which received royal assent on 8 November 2006. Within the act the ISA is referred to as the Independent Barring Board; it had been known as the ISA since August 2007, but was only formally renamed following royal assent for the Policing and Crime Bill in 2009. The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act only covers England and Wales but comparable legislation has been passed to cover Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Department for Children, Schools and Families, as it was then known held further consultations.
Read more about this topic: Independent Safeguarding Authority
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)