Dr Hendron (Chairperson)
Ms Armitage
Mr Berry
Rev Robert Coulter
Mrs Courtney
Mr J Kelly
Ms McWilliams

Mr P Doran ) Probation Board
Mr B McCaughey ) for
Ms V Owens ) Northern Ireland

The Chairperson: I thank Brian McCaughey, Paul Doran and Val Owens from the Probation Board for Northern Ireland for coming to make presentations to the Committee on the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults Bill. I hope that you do not mind keeping your presentations short, so that my Colleagues can ask the relevant questions.

Mr McCaughey: On behalf of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland, I thank you for the opportunity to give oral evidence on the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults Bill. I am Brian McCaughey, and I am director of operations. Paul Doran is assistant chief officer; he has operational responsibility in the Probation Board, at a senior management level, for all our work on child protection, supervision of sex offenders and policy development on risk and danger. Val Owens is a middle manager based at the Alderwood centre; she is leading on the development of the assessment and management of our work with sex offenders.

I will highlight briefly the relevance and importance of the Bill in relation to the work of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. We have five main points that we wish to make, as highlighted in our submission on the Bill. No doubt you will have questions for us, and we will deal with those, individually and collectively, as they arise.

The primary aim of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland is to prevent further victims - that is to reduce crime and the harm it inflicts. We do that through the assessment and management of risk posed by offenders, which is especially important with those who have committed sex offences. In all our work we strive to evidence our commitment to partnership, public protection and professionalism. The Probation Board welcomes the introduction of the Bill and supports its objective of strengthening existing arrangements to ensure that appropriate checks are carried out as to the suitability of those seeking to work with vulnerable adults and children.

As an employer of 340 staff, the Probation Board obtained category A clearance for all its employees at all levels including volunteers, which ensures that they have all had a criminal record check and a Pre-Employment Consultancy Service (PECS) check.

Our child protection procedures state that a child's welfare must be paramount in any intervention and, as such, thus overrides all other considerations and social work principles. Where there is conflict, a child's interests will always come first. The emphasis of our work on public protection, and our relation to the Bill, is specifically on children and vulnerable adults, and that will continue to be our emphasis

Mr Doran: There is confusion in the community about registers for dangerous people. For example, there is some confusion between the sex offender register, the PECS register and a register for those who are convicted of other serious offences. There must be an overarching public safety strategy to deal with that issue, because there may be people who are on the PECS register but not on the sex offender register and vice versa.

The Probation Board is aware that a PECS awareness group has been set up recently. The board welcomes the setting up of the group, which will address some of those issues. The board believes that it would be useful as part of an overall strategy, which highlights the responsibility of parents. No register can, by itself, protect children. We do not want to lull the public into a false sense of security. However, as Mr McCaughey said, the board firmly welcomes the introduction of the Bill. It believes that a public advertising campaign - explaining who can access the register and in what circumstances - would be of value.

In the proposed legislation, only those people who are convicted of an offence that leads to a sentence of 12 months' imprisonment or more are eligible for disqualification orders. However, that is not apparent from an initial reading of the Bill. When the Bill is studied in more detail, it becomes clear that it is designed only for people who are sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment or more. The Probation Board supervises people who are on probation - who may never have gone to prison - or people who have been in jail for less than 12 months. It might assess certain people in those categories as posing a risk to the public. The board, therefore, wants to deal with clause 23, which states that the qualifying sentence must be 12 months or more. Perhaps it should be extended to include those who are serving community sentences, because - since they must serve their sentence in the community - they pose a potential threat.

Sometimes criminal records do not identify the victims of certain offences, such as abduction or kidnapping, of which kidnapping may be more relevant. The Probation Board believes that it is important that criminal and court records clearly identify whether the victim was a young person or a vulnerable adult, because there may be child protection issues surrounding the conviction for abducting a child, which may not be the case with kidnapping for financial gain. There needs to be clarity in criminal records.

I mentioned briefly that the board has acknowledged the work of the PECS awareness group, which has flowed partly from the work of the Committee and the Assembly. There are issues emanating from that, especially with regard to employment, the ability to access the register and accreditation, which my colleague, Ms Owens, will address.

Ms Owens: I want to talk briefly about the accreditation process. Other submissions have also dealt with that issue. The Probation Board welcomes a system of accreditation for organisations and groups that work with children. Part of the difficulty with the system is that it does not regulate the many individuals who work with children; that may have been pointed out to the Committee by other groups. I am not sure whether that can be overcome by legislation. The board is concerned that an unintended consequence of the Bill might be to encourage more people into that area.

A range of occupations often involve one-to-one contact, which is a high-risk situation for adults who work with children. Such people would include tutors, music teachers and ice-cream vendors. Those people work in an unregulated area. Through the Probation Board's work with offenders, it has come across situations in recent years in which people have been convicted while they were employed in such an occupation. It is difficult to regulate that, and I am not sure whether the legislation could. However, it may be possible to include, if not the individuals themselves, the agencies that those people may have to go through in order to procure work of that nature. Children's entertainers, for example, are often signed up to agencies. An effect of the legislation is that agencies that procure employment for people who are disqualified from working with children could also be subject to prosecution. I am not sure how that could fit in with accreditation. Agencies, such as those that represent children's entertainers, also need to be accredited. It is important that that be considered.

It is important that there is parity with the Republic of Ireland's legislation about vetting arrangements, because it is likely that people will seek employment in both jurisdictions in organisations that work with children. The discussion may raise other issues, but those are the main points that I wanted to mention.

Ms McWilliams: You have extensive experience of working with offenders and a body of knowledge that many of the witnesses do not have. It is, therefore, important for the Committee to hear your views.

I am interested in the inclusion of community orders. The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) has not declared an intention to extend Part V of the Police Act 1997 to Northern Ireland. Therefore, criminal records are the only hard evidence of a successful prosecution. However, prosecutions are not always successful. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) provided a scenario of a case in which the child was deemed to be incompetent to give evidence, hence the prosecution was unsuccessful. Yet, had that case been prosecuted in England, there would have been sufficient evidence to issue an enhanced criminal record certificate. That cannot happen here. Will you tell us your views about that?

We are trying to get the NIO, and perhaps police officers, to give evidence. However, in the absence of Part V, or even alongside it, would you favour the inclusion of community orders?

Mr Doran: The principle of child protection is paramount. We are often faced with a dilemma about sharing information with employers. We would rather worry about the risk of proceedings further down the line than put a child at risk. That is the course of action that we have taken in the past, and we have shared information on people about whom we have had concerns.

Having said that, we must respect the rights of the individual and his or her family. We must remember that the majority of sexual offences are committed by people who know the victim. It is never a straightforward matter of the child being attacked by the bogeyman who lives around the corner. Unfortunately, the bogeyman is often someone whom the young person knows. He might be the school caretaker, or whatever.

I support the inclusion of community orders. The courts and the public want to see more effective sentencing, and they want to see that the Probation Board is committed to public protection. The board may be supervising ex-prisoners whom it would not have supervised in the past. It wants to enjoy the confidence of the public and politicians in carrying out that task.

Mr McCaughey: Ms McWilliams referred to hard and soft evidence. All evidence should be considered, if a person is deemed to be a risk to children or vulnerable adults.

Ms McWilliams: Will you elaborate on that, Mr McCaughey?

Mr McCaughey: Ms McWilliams said that in England, if a conviction or a court hearing breaks down because the child is unable to give evidence, the police could provide information about the accused's background or behaviour. That evidence should be a contributory factor in deciding whether a person should be disqualified from working with young people.

Ms McWilliams: I have been told that the police are reluctant to go down that road, because it might be seen as gathering intelligence for other reasons. It all comes back to the troubles.

Mr McCaughey: We do not view this matter in the context of the past 30 years in Northern Ireland, but in the context of child protection. It comes back to our original statement that the welfare of the child is paramount and should override everything else.

Ms McWilliams: In contrast with probation officers in the rest of the UK, probation officers here felt that their role was affected by the troubles. It is good to know that you have no difficulty with that aspect.

Mr McCaughey: We have no difficulty at all with that aspect. The Probation Board for Northern Ireland works in and with communities in Northern Ireland, and those communities support that work.

Mrs Courtney: The protection of children is always at the forefront of our minds, but even more so in the light of recent high-profile cases. In dealing with the legislation, we must bear in mind that other families may endure similar abuse.

I wanted to know more about disqualification in other jurisdictions. Ms Owens mentioned parity with the Republic of Ireland, and I agree that such parity is necessary. How does the Probation Board access information on nationals from other EU states who are working with children here?

Mr Doran: With difficulty. Our job is to assess and manage risk. We want to be satisfied that a person would pose no risk to children or vulnerable adults. Therefore, we must have confidence in the system in the country of which the person is a national. We have contacted the Conférence Permanente Européenne de la Probation (CEP), a European network of probation services. A recent case involved a person living in Northern Ireland whose first language was not English and who planned to return to his country of origin. With some difficulty, we tried to make contact with the equivalent probation service in that person's country of origin to pass on our assessment that that person was a risk to children. We have also received similar information from other countries, but on an ad hoc basis. The system only applies when we know that the person plans to leave the country.

I do not want to move into a political arena, but we may not have access to information on soldiers in Northern Ireland who have been convicted or court-martialled in England. They could be involved in duties that might give them access to children or vulnerable adults. Attention must be given to that issue, even within the UK. As regards Europe, we are keen to become more involved with the CEP because it has carried out much work on the management of dangerous people.

Mrs Courtney: Clause 30 states that

"section 28 shall apply in relation to an individual falling within subsection (2) as it applies in relation to an individual who is disqualified from working with children."

Can that clause be tightened up? England and Wales are not included because it is assumed that we are all part of the same jurisdiction. It will be difficult to access the relevant information. How can you ensure that probation officers will be able to contact probation services in a person's country of origin? Did you succeed in contacting the probation services in the case that you mentioned earlier?

Mr McCaughey: Yes, we did.

Ms McWilliams: You said that information from other European countries is relayed on an ad hoc basis. There is the Criminal Records Bureau in England, a disclosure body in Scotland and PECS here. Do similar organisations exist in Europe, other than the CEP?

Ms Owens: Perhaps I should not be speaking on behalf of the police, but I imagine that they would have connections in Interpol and could access information in that way. However, that information would probably be as a result of a criminal conviction, and I am not sure whether that would include people who had been investigated but not convicted.

Mr McCaughey: We have phone networks and contacts in related agencies. However, we would have to go through the police for a definitive version of someone's criminal record.

Ms Owens: Several cases have reached the courts, when foreign nationals who come here to seek employment, or who have been recruited, have been convicted. Some of those people have now returned home, and we try to pass on that information and our assessment.

Mr McCaughey: There will be more and more movement across borders in Europe.

Mrs Courtney: We cannot access the registers. There are times, even on holiday, when I am concerned about young children being around adults and nothing is known about the history or background of the adults, and yet intuition tells me that those people cannot be trusted. However, nothing can be done about it.

Ms Owens: People who leave Northern Ireland for more than eight days, or who return to the same location twice a year for a total of eight days, are required to tell the police service where they are going. The difficulty lies in what to do with that information and whether it should be shared automatically with child protection agencies.

Mr J Kelly: Ms Owens said that there is no parity between this part of the island and the rest of the island, and Mr Doran said that there are circumstances that presume that there is parity with England, Scotland and Wales, yet there are exceptions, such as court-martialling, where there is no access. What is meant by parity? Can a paedophile come from Dublin to Belfast without anyone knowing?

Ms Owens: There are systems of communication, but they are still informal, ad hoc and based on procedures that individual agencies have developed. I was referring to the ability to access an equivalent of PECS and criminal records in the Republic for people who come to Northern Ireland and vice versa, so that if someone from Northern Ireland goes to the Republic, the Republic can access PECS and criminal records here. We must ensure that there are no loopholes.

Mr J Kelly: Does that not happen at present?

Ms Owens: It does happen, but it is not completely foolproof. It happens when people are aware of a change of location, but that does not happen in all cases.

Mr J Kelly: Mr Doran made a point about not being able to access information.

Mr Doran: Soft information refers to the police having concerns about an individual. For example, the PSNI may not be able to bring charges against a soldier who had been court-martialled in England and found not guilty. In England there is still a question about the power to put that person on a register. However, that power does not exist in Northern Ireland unless a person is employed by an agency that has grounds to dismiss him.

I want to emphasise one point: The register itself will not protect children. The parental responsibility remains with regard to holidays and so on. The register should never be seen as the panacea for child protection.

Mr McCaughey: No piece of legislation could, or should, absolve parents from responsibility. Equally, however, parents must be supported in that responsibility.

Mr J Kelly: On the question of downloading child pornography, is there a distinction between those who download it, perhaps for distribution, and those who commit an offence against a child?

Ms Owens: Not in the sense of a child protection agenda.

Mr J Kelly: Is one less culpable than the other?

Ms Owens: We do not go into culpability or league tables. The bottom line is whether the person presents a risk, and the answer is yes. That is linked to a point concerning legislation on disqualification. I understand that there is a process, through a social care tribunal, whereby someone who was a young person at the time of disqualification can be reviewed after 10 years.

Comments were made in that process, but not in the legislation, about the risk having passed. I am not happy about that. In no situation could it be said, in respect of that type of behaviour, that the risk had passed with the passage of time. People are convicted at pensionable age for sexual offences. It might be important that any review procedure make it clear that if an individual applies for a review there should be an update of the risk assessment.

Mr J Kelly: Do you mean across the board? The reason I asked the question was because an individual in my own area was arrested and sentenced for downloading child pornography. The debate locally was that downloading child pornography was not as bad as participating in it.

Ms Owens: It is not possible to know the risk until details are known of how long someone has been engaging in that behaviour. Sometimes what appears at the surface is not everything that has gone on.

Mr J Kelly: No one will ever know how long it has gone on.

Ms McWilliams: There is a concern regarding clause 21. In respect of an offence committed when someone is under 18 years of age, a person will be disqualified only if there appears to be a likelihood of further offences being committed by the individual.

"An order shall not be made under this section if the court is satisfied, having regard to all the circumstances, that it is unlikely that the individual will commit any further offences against a child."

The words "it is unlikely" concern me. Should we consider deleting them because they allow a wide-open interpretation? How is that decided when there is already a behaviour pattern?

Mr McCaughey: It could, perhaps, be reversed to read: "An order will be made in this case unless it is proven".

Ms McWilliams: That puts it into the negative.

Ms Owens: It is very difficult. Such a judgement could not be made at that stage of the court procedure, because the assessments carried out will not have reached the court.

Ms McWilliams: Could we perhaps consider drafting something of that sort when we come to it?

Ms Armitage: Where entertainers are concerned, the situation is not as bad; usually a group of children is present. Home tutoring, however, concerns me. That is dangerous. Children go for home tutoring after school to a house where perhaps only the tutor is present and are there for two hours. Although that situation is on our own doorstep, we seem unable to check it.

Ms Owens: Oliver Brannigan, the chief executive of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland, has discussed this issue recently, and he suggested that self-employed people could carry a licence.

The Chairperson: Without that, parents have no way of knowing about that person's credentials.

Ms Armitage: Perhaps such people should register as a tutor. Tutoring is popular, and dozens of children receive it. That problem has been left wide open.

The Chairperson: Ms Armitage has made a good point.

Mr McCaughey: Parents are aware of tutors who have criminal convictions for offences against children, and they continue to send their children for music lessons and so forth. It is known in the community that that individual served a period of imprisonment for those types of offences. When the Committee is considering legislation, I urge it to remember that the behaviour of parents and others must match their knowledge.

Ms Armitage: That is very difficult, because when the child goes home, he or she may not discuss what happened in the previous couple of hours, because children often do not do that.

Mr McCaughey: People's involvement in, and conviction for, such crimes and their subsequent release is well-known in communities. Others are informed through word of mouth and the local newspapers. Parents make choices based on that information.

Ms Armitage: That is correct if those people have been convicted, but they may continue to commit offences. Parents have responsibilities, but this could be a problem. Tutoring is very common, and the children go in and shut the door and are out again in two hours.

The Chairperson: We shall wind up the discussion. I should like to thank the Probation Board for Northern Ireland for its documentation and presentation and for answering our questions.