Police check from the CRB
The Criminal Records Bureau is an executive arm of the Home Office and was set up in March 2002 under the Police Act 1997 to check if any applicant has any police record that will excluded them from working with children or vulnerable adults.
The Criminal Records Bureau
The need for a police check in adoption cases is self-explanatory.
There are two types of checks - Standard and Enhanced and it is the Enhanced one that you need for your application. There is a fee for this service.
An Enhanced CRB check shows current and spent Convictions, Cautions, Reprimands and Warnings in held on the Police National Computer (PNC) as well as any relevant and proportionate information held by the local police forces and other agencies and a check of the new Children and or Vulnerable Adults barred list. They access information held by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), the British Transport Police, the Royal Military Police and the Ministry of Defence Police as well as the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO).
The Cost of an Enhanced CRB Certificate is £36.00 and it should take about 4 weeks to process from the day they receive it. Please if you are going through your local authorities check and recheck that they have sent it . My son spent an unnecessary 2 extra months in the orphanage because my local authority lied to me, telling me that they had sent the application off and they had not. Please also bear in mind that you may have to apply for the CRB more than once as in some countries courts will not accept documents that are older than 12 months, and your initial CRB certificate may have expired.
To avoid delay, ensure that you complete the application form correctly, complete all the mandatory fields, provide all the names you have even been known by and all the addresses where you have lived in the last 5 years.
This is how you fill in the form
The CRB is required to ask the police if they have any relevant locally held information about you, which they consider should be released as part of the check. As a minimum the CRB will contact each police force for each areas where you have lived in the past 5 years. The performance of each police force contacted can impact on the time to process the certificate.
Kindly, the CRB recognises that there may be some sensitive and personal information and thus have issued a Code of Practice and a employer's guidance for recipients of CRB certificates, to ensure they are handled fairly and used properly.
If you have a misdemeanour noted, this should not automatically bar you from your adoption application. You will most likely be asked to explain the situation and an assessment will be made, to see if it would affect your ability to look after a child.
CRB
PO Box 110
Liverpool
L69 3EF
0870 9090 811
0870 9090 811
customerservices@crb.gsi.gov.uk
If you wish to track the progress of your application you can do that here.
More information on CRB checks can be found here
