Independent Safeguarding Authority Scheme.
Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) Scheme to go live from 12 October 2009
If you are involved in organizing sport for children or vulnerable adults, you need to be aware of this new legislation.
The Home Office has announced that from 12 October 2009 individuals will need to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) if they are to work or volunteer with children and/or vulnerable adults in a regulated activity.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) Scheme (which has previously been referred to as the Vetting and Barring scheme) is a new piece of legislation that will impact upon organisations and individuals that are engaged with the delivery of activities to children and/or vulnerable adults.
It will affect both paid professionals and volunteers in the same way. The Safeguarding Vulnerable groups Act is the law that gives powers to the Independent Safeguarding Authority Scheme.
The ISA will assess applications made to them and will decide if individuals should be placed on a barred list or a registered list. It will be unlawful for clubs or other organisations to use the individuals on the barred list for delivery to children and vulnerable adults.
Those on the registered list will be given an ISA number. It will be unlawful for clubs to use people in activity involving children and vulnerable adults who are not on the registered list.
Key changes that you will need to be aware of when the ISA Scheme is implemented are:
- Any organization (including voluntary sports clubs) will always need to check a person's ISA status before employing them in either paid or voluntary positions where there is contact with young people or vulnerable adults you cannot take their word for it and you cannot have them in post, even supervised, before you know the outcome of the ISA check.
- The ISA Scheme provides continual assessment. Once an individual has been registered with the ISA Scheme any 'employing' organisation of that individual will receive notification from the ISA if their status changes and they are no longer suitable to work with young people or vulnerable adults. The club or organisation is then expected to terminate the position of that individual.
- Once an individual is registered with the ISA scheme he/she will stay registered for life (unless they are subsequently added to the barred list). Therefore if you are employing a volunteer who is already ISA registered you will be able to use their ISA registration number to check their status via the ISA website.
- A turnaround time from applying to the ISA scheme to receiving a notice of either being registered or barred is anticipated to be 1 week for 9/10 people.
It should be noted that this scheme does not replace the need to obtain CRB Disclosures. As the administration of the ISA Scheme is undertaken by the CRB, it is hoped that applications to the CRB and the ISA will be combined.
We have provided this information to raise awareness and encourage you to consider the implications on your organization / club. More information will become available from the ISA website www.isa-gov.org
Click Here to download the ISA Stakeholder Newsletter - July 2008
Further information about the ISA scheme can be obtained from Paul O'Hare in the Support Services Team at Berkshire Sport. Tel:01183 766122 Email: paul.ohare@reading.gov.uk
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