Well yes actually I know what a CRB is. I used to work for the local FA as a Welfare Officer, tasked with reaching 100's of 1'000s of people volunteering in Youth football without any police or club checks. 90% were parents giving up their spare time to support their son/daughter's club from coaching to making teas to sitting on the committee. Not all roles require a CRB for example running the line at a match...you're not left unsupervised and the ref has a CRB (assuming he's over 18) and the two team coaches have CRB's and maybe one or two other parents if they help out...anyway it's a complicated process, helped by volunteer Welfare Officers, one for each club, who provide a list of names of all coaches and adults involved in footall within their club and their CRB status is checked online...
So what happens here in South Africa?...
Well I can't find a link on the school web page or SAFA website, there are Mission Statements and Codes of Conduct, but nothing clearly labelled as 'Child Protection/Welfare'
I was able to host two children over night from a visiting school without so much as filling in a form, mind you the school knew I must've cleared a police check to get my visa in the first place.
I was reading a magazine www.people.co.za in the hairdressers when I came across the 'Find a Pen Friend' page....
I was shocked, I was alarmed, seriously..there was a 12 year old boy wanting a penfriend, he listed his interests, name and email address and the other was a 16 year old girl who left her mobile phone number as a contact...
Can you imagine the uproar in the UK, how the media would react to this or do you think possibly that the UK are overdoing it a bit? after all even with all these people out there and CRB's and Police Checks and Multi agency working, there are still horror stories everyday of paedophiles who slipped the net.
