The Home Office on relationships of trust

The Home Office official, John O’Brien, gives a telling outline on Radio 4’s The Report (13 August) of who should be vetted. Someone should be vetted, he says, if ‘you get the opportunity to become familiar to them [children]’, and he says that ‘there is lots of evidence that the ability to build the relationship [with children] can lead to things like grooming’. He says that people who meet a group of children once should not be vetted, on the basis of ‘one-off contact not giving ability to form a relationship’ – but that organisations should be careful that non-vetted adults don’t meet the same children at different events!