All adult-volunteering roles involve some trust and responsibility around children, and we must fulfill the Scout Association requirement to conduct rigorous background checks on all our volunteers.
All volunteers need to supply a few forms that provide us with some personal details and permit us to maintain a record of you on our UK Scout membership system called Compass. Your role can only be confirmed upon successful conclusion of the full disclosure process.
Confidentiality
It is not uncommon for adults to have some history that may emerge following a disclosure check such as minor delinquencies or driving offenses. The Scout Association sends such UK DBS disclosure revelations to the District Commissioner only. Only you decide with whom to share your NL VOG disclosure revelations.
Adverse disclosure checks are reviewed by the District Commissioner and a decision made as to whether there are matters that require action. As a rule, police cautions, youthful delinquencies and driving offenses are not an impediment to you joining the Association.
Disclosure check process
The background disclosure check process for British Scouting Overseas has 2 elements:
- A UK DBS check for volunteers who have lived in the UK. You can skip this step if you have never lived in the UK or only lived in the UK as a child under the age of 10 years.
- A Local Netherlands VOG check for all volunteers.
UK Disclosure procedure
The UK disclosure procedure is conducted exclusively online and requires an established Scout Leader to verify your identity. There is no cost associated with this, but you need to produce 3 items from a specified list of identity documents.
The steps are:
- Complete the UK Identity checking form.
- Select the Identity documents described very carefully.
- Arrange to meet a Scout Leader to check the documents.
- Perform the online submission with the Scout Leader.
NL Disclosure procedure
The NL disclosure procedure is conducted by visiting the local Gemeente at which you are registered and submitting a certificate of conduct (VOG) application form. There is a fee associated with this process that you will have to pay during your appointment at the Gemeente.
The steps are:
- Complete the NL VOG form for 1st the Hague (we'll provide you with a pre-populated version of this).
- Make an appointment to visit your Gemeente.
- Attend the appointment with the form completed and some ID.
Both procedures take between 2 and many weeks to conclude depending on the complexity of the search. However, the Netherlands search is extremely efficient and usually takes about 2 weeks.
The first step in the background check process is to complete an Adult Volunteering Form.
