Members disclosing spent convictions

As our first priority is protecting the public we need to ask about convictions. We also recognise that people have a right to privacy, and some ‘spent’ convictions will not be relevant to current clinical practice.

We will be implementing a process of assessing DBS (or the equivalent national) checks in the near future. Our interim process until then is based on how these types of convictions are assessed and ‘filtered’. For more information, please see here.

What you do not need to tell us about

You do not need to declare cautions for a non-specified offence as an adult, if more than six years have passed since the date of issue. If the caution was issued more than six years ago and you were under age 18 at the time the caution was issued you do not need to declare it even if it was for a specified offence. It does not matter how many cautions you have received, you only have to declare the ones which are not ‘spent’.

You do not need to declare offences that are more than 11 years ago (or 5.5 years ago if you were under aged 18 at the time of the offence) if they did not result in a prison sentence and if they were not for a specified offence. This applies no matter how many convictions you have, you only have to declare any which are within that recent time frame.

What you must tell us about

You must always declare an offence that resulted in a prison sentence. You must always declare an offence that would never be filtered from a DBS or equivalent check. It is your duty to check and declare any offences stated within the list of offences that will never be filtered from a criminal record check. 

You are not eligible for BABCP membership, Accreditation or Registration if you are ‘barred’ from working with either adults or children.

Please can you advise if you received a prison sentence or if any conviction/s would appear on the list of offences that would never be filtered from a DBS check.

We will treat any information that you disclose to us with careful data security and sensitivity, and will only use it for the purpose that you have supplied it to us.

Further information of DBS or equivalent checks

England – DBS 

Ireland – Garda clearance

Northern Ireland - DBS

Scotland – Disclosure Scotland

Wales – DBS as for England, also Welsh language scheme