Loophole in child safety

Thursday 24th November 2011, 3:00PM GMT.

Fiona Vacher, executive director of the JCCT

PEOPLE working with babies and young children in Jersey’s crêches do not have to be police checked, the JEP has learned.

A gap in Jersey law means that parents may not know the history of who is looking after their children.

After being alerted to the problem, the Education department has launched an investigation and is seeking legal advice.

That comes after the Island’s largest child care charity to launched a campaign to push the States into changing the law to ensure that all those working with babies and children in Jersey are police checked.

The Jersey child Care Trust, which is based at The Bridge, St Saviour, said that the reason crêches are outside the law is because they look after children for less than two hours.

Fiona Vacher, executive director of the JCCT, said: ‘When we asked parents, they had no idea that crêches may not be police checked and couldn’t believe it.’

Read the full story in the Jersey Evening Post. Click here for subscription details. Individual editions are also available online.

1
Mark

November 24, 2011 at 3:23 pm

Worse still the Jersey database is just that, a database restricted to Jersey.

Report abuse
2
Kermit

November 24, 2011 at 5:06 pm

Jersey for you again. 10 years behind…

Report abuse
3
Gonzo

November 24, 2011 at 6:50 pm

Or indeed 10 years ahead?

Report abuse
4
Peter

November 24, 2011 at 7:01 pm

Strange – you don’t need any qualifications to look after your own children, but you need them to look after other peoples. It’s a pity more parents cannot afford to stay at home and be a proper parent. Most of Europe does not bother with police checks and believe that the UK system is just stupid. Police checks do not stop anyone who has not yet been caught. Stay and home and be a proper parent if you are worried and stop putting yourself first.

Report abuse
5
Karen

November 24, 2011 at 7:21 pm

My God that is so bad get with it Jersey we all read enough stories on child abuse etc.

Report abuse
6
Felicity

November 24, 2011 at 11:35 pm

The problem is though, Karen, that we read so many stories that everyone is becoming too scared to fart in public. It will end up with people pushing prams with armour plate on if this paranoid thing goes on much longer.

Report abuse
- Vlad1m1r
  
  November 25, 2011 at 10:06 am
  
  Well said Felicity,
  
  I have done a video on my Youtube channel about this (the channel is in the name above, vlad1m1r) – about the campaign to introduce Sarah’s Law on Facebook.
  
  The evidence seems to be quite clear that such measures actually serve to increase the danger to children.
  
  I think we need to accept this is a problem without an easy or totally effective solution. Paedophiles are cunning and we need to be equally cunning in detecting them.
  
  Instead of draconian measures which will only serve to make the situation worse and put innocent people under suspicion, we should be much more on board with technology.
  
  I have been reading the JEP and all the recent cases have been people with no prior convictions. Often they have used social networking websites to try to contact children.
  
  The “Thinkyouknow” campaign has been very effective in encouraging parents to monitor their children’s online activity e.g through having a single family computer in a communal area.
  
  It would be possible to have a voluntary scheme whereby the Police use what’s called a “transparent proxy” to sit between children’s computers and the internet. They could then have a dedicated team sampling common chat protocols such as MSN and Facebook chat for key words and look for any worrying behaviour.
  
  This sounds a little Orwellian but as long as there were proper safeguards in place for actioning and erasing the data gained, I think it would be the single most effective strategy at reducing “stranger danger.”
  
  Of course what the hysterical crowd want us to forget is that children are for more likely to be in danger from their own family – that’s the real issue to be addressed if we’re going to stop cruelty to kids on a large scale.
  
  Report abuse
7
Mary

November 25, 2011 at 7:52 am

Police checks are not worth the paper they are written on if the person has never been caught. Just look at the paedophile ring caught working in the UK nursery schools a couple of years ago. On paper they were all whiter than white and how long had they been doing it before being caught.

Report abuse
- Mark
  
  November 25, 2011 at 3:13 pm
  
  True Mary,but a check is better than no checks at all. That said, a check against only Jersey records is only a little better than useless.
  
  Report abuse
8
Nate Jordan

November 25, 2011 at 9:39 am

I think the level of hysteria about child abuse is not helpful towards its prevention. Countries with comparable Police forces such as France do not have such Orwellian measures in place and do not suffer greater levels of child abuse.

As Mary rightly points out the most sensational cases in the media of late have been people with no prior convictions – worse still the enhanced CRB Disclosure in the UK records more than information related to conviction ; now even an unsubstantiated allegation can be forwarded on – an abuse of innocent people who are accused of crimes.

Report abuse
9
Com-Mentator

November 25, 2011 at 10:11 am

But if you work for the scouts or a football club or any ‘activity’ involving children you need to be background checked.

Double standards.

Report abuse
10
Mario

November 25, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Another good reason why one parent should stay at home and look after their own children.

None of this was ever an issue when I was young as mothers stayed at home and spent more time with their children unlike now when it’s out the door at 7.30am and back home at 5.30pm for many. Parents are therefore much more tired when they do see their children, maybe for an hour or two a day in some cases when they are very young, before putting them to bed.

We also have some who have adopted the fashion accessory angle and who can’t wait to give the child to someone else to look after, as they don’t like them affecting their life style too much.

This is not good for society and will have long term consequencies.

Yes as someone else has already pointed out why is this so prevalent in Anglo-Saxon societies compared to other societies?

Report abuse
11
Fiona Vacher

November 25, 2011 at 1:32 pm

To clarify…the UK also excludes creches from their law. A person can be identified as unsuitable through the CRB checks as it uses both conviction and intellegence data. The CRB does not just use Jersey database, there is a gateway through that includes the UK.
Peter, this is about a check being done to ensure that those working with other people’s children have appropriate CRB clearance from the Police. This is not about qualifications and it is not about working parents using day nurseries or pre-schools. Creches look after children for under 2 hours, so for example in a sports centre, church or supermarket.

Report abuse
12
George Orwell 1984

November 26, 2011 at 12:56 am

Intelligence data- how sinister. No means to challenge it. No avenue of appeal. No court of competent jurisdiction (no court at all in fact) supervising the process. So much for “innocent until proved guilty”. One malicious, unfounded allegation could put paid to a career or vocation, it seems.

Report abuse
13
Observer

November 26, 2011 at 10:21 am

10: “Yes as someone else has already pointed out why is this so prevalent in Anglo-Saxon societies compared to other societies?”

I think the answer to that one is that the latin countries in Europe (for example) have much stronger family values than is now the case in the Anglo-Saxon psyche. It may have a lot to do with the catholic religion in the latin countries.

These people value their own and look after their children properly and, significantly, their elderly kin.The hangover from this in Jersey may be seen in farmhouses allowing two or more generations to live there.

Unfortunately, much of this family unity has now gone in Jersey, although the Portuguese community, for the reasons set out above, still hold such values, thank goodness. The rest of the population is motivated, it seems, by greed. A lot of this attitude has come from an alien way of thinking which accompanied the vast influx of people from England when the rich pickings of the finance industry, together with a lack of immigration controls, began to destroy the Jersey way of life.

In practical terms as well, the effect of the finance industry is that the success (for some) which it has brought has led to a steep increase in property prices. The effect of that is that both parents have to work in order to buy a property. This, in turn, results in latchkey children, who arrive home to an empty house.

Report abuse