This post has turned into a bit of an epic – I apologise. This stuff needs saying.

The more I read about the ISA, the more anxious I’m becoming. ISA stands for Independent Safeguarding Authority, and are a Quango with the job of deciding whether or not people should go into the “Child’s list” and/or the “Adult’s list.”

If your name appears in these lists, you are barred from working with children or vulnerable adults either on a professional or voluntary basis. End of story.

Quote, “it is not a punitive sanction. It’s a proactive measure to protect children and vulnerable adults.” Oh, that’s alright then. So say I submit myself to the ISA for vetting and they decide to bar me, and I have to go to all the other parents and admit to them that I’ve been blacklisted so, you know, sorry, I can’t give your kids a lift to footie anymore…. they’ll be sympathetic and understanding to my unlucky run-in with a paranoid, faceless state will they? I doubt it. Rumours will spread that I’m obviously totally dodgy, probably a paedophile, too – I mean, the Safeguarding Authority must have had a good reason to ban me, right? No smoke without fire?

Yet smoke is what the ISA are using to come up with their decisions. You see the problem?

In the olden days, if you were convicted of certain offences you would go on the Sex Offender’s register. This would prevent you working with children or vulnerable adults. Fair enough. I have no particular interest in the employment opportunities available to rapists and the like. Their liberty can legitimately be interfered with.

But the new system is more much comprehensive. It’s not just convicted criminals. I’ve read the guidelines for the Safeguarding Authority and I’m reasonably certain virtually everyone meets the standard required to be blacklisted, should they choose.

The Safeguarding Authority are looking for events with ‘relevant conduct’ – awful jargon – which means they’re looking for reports of ‘abusive’ behaviour (and one can argue quite convincingly ‘politically incorrect’ behaviour), irrespective of whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. Been on the Jeremy Kyle show? Had an unfavourable story printed about you in the Metro? Someone written about you on the internet? Ever pissed off a social worker? Importantly, has anyone made any complaints about you to the police or the council, whether or not you went to trial?

In stage one, they’re not interested in whether or not the event happened. They simply check whether or not the reported behaviour meets the criteria they’re looking for.

So let’s see what this includes (even the list listed is listed as ‘non exhaustive’ by the way)

Any remark or comment by others that causes distress

Whoa. Any remark? Explain further, please:

Demeaning, disrespectful, humiliating, racist, sexist….

I think I see where they’re going with this…

… or sarcastic comments.

Whoa. Sarcasm? Really?

Excessive or unwanted familiarity, shouting, swearing, name-calling.

Okay, so I’ve gone through their list of ‘relevant conduct’ and picked out the bit we’re all guilty of at one time or another. We all have our bad days, our weak moments… but sarcasm? Being disrespectful? Shouting? If you haven’t, then congratulations. For the rest of us, we need to hope the Safeguarding Authority haven’t heard about our ‘abusive’ behavior.

“But!” you’re saying, “Just being sarcastic towards a kid isn’t enough reason to get blacklisted is it?”

I sympathise, but the guidelines continue:

Experience…

Translation: “Anecdote”

…. indicates that it is unusual for abuse to manifest itself in only one harm category. It can be expected that evidence of a combination of these behaviours will be apparent in more serious cases.

In other words, if you’re guilty of one category of abuse, in this case ‘verbal’ abuse it’s more likely than not that you’ve also committed other crimes of abuse in the emotional/psychological, physical, sexual or neglect categories.

Speaking of which, here’s the Safeguarding Authority’s ‘examples’ of Emotional/Psychological abuse against vulnerable adults:

Inflexible regimes and lack of choice

Ha.

Mocking, coercing, denying privacy, threatening behaviour.

Can you feel that? That’s your irony meter going off the scale.

… bullying, intimidation, harassment

That’s it. Head exploded. All of these things are, of course, terrible – except when it’s the Government doing it to us to protect the beautiful, cute little children (the Maddy McCanns of this world). Quite where this insanity copes with the demonisation and scapegoating of children who hang around outside off-licences because their parents are smack heads and drunks is a question I leave for another day. In terms of ‘easy wins’ protecting children, wouldn’t those sorts of children seem like a better place to start, rather than affording even more “protection” to the nice, middle class kids who participate in lots of extra-curricular activities?

Or is that just me? Are my priorities screwed up?

So let’s say they’ve found out about something you did once and have decided it’s ‘relevant conduct’ – they then need to make a decision about whether they reckon it’s really happened, and the test for this? It’s the balance of probabilities. Not beyond reasonable doubt. In fact, that’s the point – the point of the ISA is to ban people from working with children who can’t be proved to be guilty of anything (the law is such a pain for politicians, isn’t it?)…. otherwise, if you think about it, the ISA wouldn’t be necessary. It’s the Department Of Gossip, Innuendo and Hearsay.

So the Safeguarding Authority have decided an event is relevant and they’ve then agreed amongst themselves that it probably happened. At this point they’re supposed to blacklist you, but first – lucky you – you get to explain to them why you shouldn’t be added. If you don’t turn up, you’re added automatically. If you fuck up your defence – by that I mean fail to prove that the event didn’t really happen – then you’re blacklisted.

It gets worse, by the way – sorry.

Even if someone has been found Not Guilty by a jury, you must always remember that, at most, this means is that [sic] the court did not find that someone did something “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Nope. It means they’re legally innocent, because in the UK we have a principle known as Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Well, we did.

The test applied by the ISA in relation to barring considerations is cause for concern.

Nice, but this next bit made me gasp in horror:

If in doubt, you should consult your line manager.

And my favourite bit of all:

If it is found that the evidence demonstrates on the balance of probabilities that an event happened, then that is treated as a “finding of fact”. However, even if it doesn’t, the evidence may still be highly relevant in the context of the “risk of harm” powers.

In other words, hey, look, even if something probably didn’t happen, you should still consider it anyway. After all, where there’s smoke there’s fire, right. And remember:

If in doubt, you should consult your Line Manager.

Summing up then, this is the proverbial line in the sand. This is the ‘far’ in ‘too far.’ I propose a mass boycott, mass civil disobedience – simply refuse to submit yourself. Refuse to ask for ISA approval, too. This thing needs to be fought, and fought hard.

If you’re in any doubt, try to figure out what you might say to other people if you submitted yourself for vetting and found yourself barred and realise you’re in for a few decades of pure hell trying to clear your name (and being put into the same category as sex offenders as a danger to children and vulnerable adults).

If you know of any organisations or campaigns against this, please can you link them in the comments and I’ll try to do another post later summing up the major points of opposition. But seriously, if you’ve been storing up a bit of civil disobedience for something too appalling to suffer, this is your moment.