Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made of the potential impact of processing times for DBS on the trends in the number of carers in the sector.

As part of the Department’s commissioned research, Understanding recruitment to the adult social care workforce, undertaken by the King’s Fund, Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are referenced in relation to recruitment and retention challenges. The full report is available at the following link:

https://www.york.ac.uk/media/healthsciences/images/research/prepare/reportsandtheircoverimages/Understanding%20recruitment%20to%20the%20adult%20social%20care%20workforce%20final.pdf

DBS does not report its performance by specific job sectors. DBS publishes its performance for all checks on a quarterly basis at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dbs-performance--2

These attainments apply to applications across all employment sectors, including the care sector.

Care workers require enhanced DBS checks, and this is the highest level of check available to those working with vulnerable groups and other positions that involve a high degree of trust. DBS aims to issue 80% of Enhanced checks within 14 days and the average attainment for the most recent quarter was 74.7%, with the 80% target met on day 20. The average turnaround time for all Enhanced checks in the quarter was 12.6 days.

For Enhanced checks, the DBS works closely with all police forces to ensure checks are completed as quickly as possible. This includes funding additional staff and overtime within forces. Where possible, police forces with capacity are also helping those with a large number of outstanding cases, a process managed by the DBS.