How often should Safer Recruitment training be refreshed?

When the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) was responsible for Safer Recruitment training, the refresher timescale was every five years. After the closure in 2012 of the CWDC, there is no statutory accredited training for Safer Recruitment. Keeping Children Safe in Education, Part Three ‘Safer Recruitment’ says, that ‘training should cover, as a minimum, the content of [Keeping Children Safe]’. There is now no refresher training timescale.

The Safer Recruitment Consortium, managed by the Lucy Faithful Foundation, does offer accredited training, but it is not statutory to do their training. The Consortium’s policy is not to give a refresher time frame.

Personally, I think that refreshers are useful, for three reasons; we forget, we need to keep up-to-date with changes in legislation and guidance, and we need to understand learning from serious case reviews when children have been harmed by staff in schools.

All schools need a Safer Recruitment policy, and it is sensible to include in it, how often your staff and governors will refresh that training, if at all.