Steal This!
Hello, hello!
Well! June and July have been SO busy that I skipped sending a newsletter at the end of last month, naughty me!
I’ve also had a chance to think about a new format for these newsletters, and I think I’m going to go with a “Steal This!” approach- so that each month, I’ll share something that you can hopefully use/share/apply straight away. If there’s anything you’d like a little update on, please do let me know and I’ll include your topic gladly.
So this month, I’m going to give you an update on the latest DBS changes about to come in. They change as of 1st September and affect you if your organisation has volunteers who come into contact with children and young people (that's anyone under the age 18).
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 has a lot to answer for! Along all the other goodies I told you about last time, it has also removed the supervision exemption from the definition of regulated activity. In plain English: a volunteer who regularly works with children used to sit outside regulated activity as long as a member of staff was supervising them. But not any more.
So if a volunteer teaches, trains, instructs, cares for or supervises young people, and does it more than three days in any 30-day period, or overnight, they're now in a regulated activity. Which means they need an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list information before they carry on. The bit that has specifically changed is that it doesn't matter if they are supervised or not. The enhanced DBS is needed.
⭐ STEAL THIS: the 10-minute volunteer audit
Run every CYP-facing volunteer through these:
What do they actually do? Teaching, training, instructing, caring for or supervising children? If yes, continue through the questions. (Pure admin, no contact with children? You can stop here.)
How often? More than three days in any 30-day period, or any overnight, brings them in.
Count everywhere they volunteer, not just with you. Their days at the football club, the Brownies, the Saturday reading group all count towards the same total. You will have to actually ask them, not just look at your own data.
In scope? Enhanced DBS with children's barred list information, before they carry on. Supervised or not.
Genuinely occasional? The parent who does one non-overnight trip or hosts the PTA stall once isn't included here.
Diarise it. You can't apply before 1 September (the status only changes that day), so do the audit now, submit on the day. The checks are free, by the way. The issue is more likley to be your capacity.
Tidy the paperwork. Update your safer-recruitment policy and volunteer role descriptions to match.
And not that I want to freak you out, but letting a barred person carry on in regulated activity is a criminal offence, both for them and for the organisation. So this isn't just a nice-to-have.
On a serious one, if I asked you today to name every volunteer this now applies to, could you do it? Or would you be reaching for the volunteer spreadsheet you've been meaning to sort since 2016? (No judgement. That spreadsheet and I are old friends.)
Hit reply and let me know if you have any questions. And if you need a hand auditing or rewriting the policy, just say the word.
