Church background checks are important for because every church faces risk a risk of church abuse no matter the structure, creed or size. It is important for the churches to be vigilant when hiring or accepting volunteers to deal with children and the youth. It is also important to put in place measures to prevent the possibility of abuse happening after recruitment. Some of the measures suggested include:
- Volunteers or members of the congregation should not be allowed to handle children unless they have been members of the church for 6 months.
- All the times two adults should be assigned to handle children in a class or other enclosures. This should be enforced even when the one child or two children are being supervised.
- Educating workers on the laws and identify inappropriate behavior and report it.
- Check Previous employments, previous church memberships, volunteer history and any other information that might be useful should be collected. Ideally a form can be developed and used to screen potential workers.
Background checks
Checking of the potential employees past may involve a background check. A background check is the process of compiling criminal, financial or commercial records of an individual. This is done to evaluate the character, qualifications, fitness, and to identify potential hiring risks for security reasons. These checks could be done by a government agency or private companies. The most important question is where to start with the background check.
There are many searches which use databases to check for past records of potential employees. While this might be helpful, they might not capture the whole history of a person, even the criminal record. Many background search databases have incomplete records, while others may not capture information that is not electronically captured, there being correctional institutions which don’t electronically store information. The other problem with an all criminal record searches is that there might be a discrepancy with the names of convicts, or people with similar names might be mistaken for the same person.
Recommendation for conducting background searches
The recommended method of criminal background checks which would eliminate the shortcoming of the criminal background checks is the use of combination of name, birth date and social security number in the search so as to eliminate many unreliable results as possible. Reputable firms use these combinations for search together with supplementing the criminal search with county court records, and check on names, together with the other social security details so as to ensure that there was no attempt to erase criminal records. This method is important not only for gathering important information but also to comply with the federal and state laws concerning background checks.
What if there is a record?
Once the results for the criminal background check are received and the potential candidate is found to have a criminal record, several steps could be taken to consider whether to hire or not. The first important step is to verify whether the person whose record you have is the same as the candidate in question, this depends on how the check was conducted. It IS also important to know the guidelines used in the local public school system on the issue. An attorney could be consulted to give legal advice. Apart from that it is important to consider the level of risk the candidate poses if recruited and this can be done by acquiring details of the offences and how serious they are. Criminal background searches should be used to keep our children safe.