I’ve recently been offered a traineeship in childcare which I’m really excited about. I’ve been with my current job for 25 years so looking forward to the change.
My concern is I’ve been waiting for a working with children clearance for over 4 weeks now. I’ve rang them to see what the delay is.
I’m worried that I’m not going to get the clearance because of allegations against my son a couple of years ago. There were allegations against him for trying to touch his sister while in my care.
He was arrested and after 5 mths his charges were dropped due to not having enough evidence. I haven’t had him in the house since as I don’t want any tension between the 2 of them.
Still to this day I don’t know if anything happened and it causes me a lot of worry.
My question is has anyone had any issues getting a working with children clearance after such allegations which weren’t directly related to you.
This is a place where women from different backgrounds, cultures and beliefs come together to support one another judgement free.
6 Replies
It depends what record exists and whether your name was on things. Unlikely a dropped allegation against someone else would impact though. These things often take time, 3 weeks isn't too long
Just a follow up, it’s now been 8 1/2 wks and still waiting. I’ve sent numerous emails and called them and get told the same thing.
It’s getting frustrating now as I signed the contract for my new job to start 5/1 and can’t start it yet due to not having a clearance.
I’ve got not criminal history and have volunteered at my childrens school for many years, but just taking forever.
It takes between 3-12 weeks!
Every where is short staffed, expect they would be too.
I have a past child safety history, nothing against me persay, concerns with my kids around their birth father and then again my ex with my kids. He actually had prior reports (unknown to me) of allegations of sexual abuse against 2 other children - substantiated with child safety but no arrest or charges due to lack of evidence. I’ve never had issues with my clearance.
Did take a while though from memory, but was told it could take 3mths to complete.
Just to put your mind at rest, I have done police checks annually and WWC checks several times over the past 15-20 years and they look for convictions, not dropped allegations for people you're related to. Otherwise they'd be there for months! But since I moved states twice, and especially since I married 8 years ago, my police checks have taken minimum 6-8 weeks to process simply because of extra justice depts and names to search under. Add to that likely they're short on staff at the moment and it blows all the timeframes out. It's probably nothing.