Successful Minded-to-Bar Defence Secures No Further Action for Tamworth Children’s Home Director

Outcome: The Disclosure and Barring Service took no further action and did not place our client on the Children’s Barred List.

Clifford Johnston & Co represented a former director of a Tamworth children’s residential care provider after the DBS issued a minded-to-bar letter based on serious Ofsted concerns about leadership, safeguarding, staffing, training and the quality of care provided to children.

The potential consequences were significant. A decision to place her on the Children’s Barred List would have prevented her from undertaking regulated activity with children, including the supervised, non-managerial work she hoped to pursue in the future.

This was not a case in which our client sought to deny every failing. She accepted that serious shortcomings had occurred and that, as a director, she remained accountable for the organisation’s failures. The central issue was whether those historic leadership failings meant that she now presented a safeguarding risk requiring exclusion from all regulated activity with children.

Can the DBS take no further action after serious Ofsted and safeguarding concerns?

Yes. A minded-to-bar letter is not the final decision. The representations stage allows the individual to address the evidence relied upon by the DBS, demonstrate insight and remediation, explain changed circumstances and make submissions about future safeguarding risk and proportionality.

In this case, we accepted the genuine leadership failures, demonstrated substantial reflection and remediation, and argued that the circumstances giving rise to the concerns would not be recreated in the supervised, non-managerial work our client proposed to undertake. The DBS ultimately took no further action.

The background

Our client had been a director of a company operating a children’s home. The DBS relied on concerns arising from Ofsted inspections, including ineffective leadership and management, inadequate care planning, insufficient regard to children’s wishes and feelings, weak safeguarding responses and failures to ensure that staff had appropriate training.

Our client accepted the seriousness of those shortcomings. Although she was not responsible for the day-to-day running of the home, she recognised that her position as director carried responsibility for the organisation and that she should have acted more quickly and decisively when standards deteriorated.

That acceptance was important. The case was not advanced on the basis that nothing had gone wrong. Instead, the representations focused on what our client had learned, what had changed and whether the evidence showed that she remained unsafe to work with children in every capacity.

Our approach to the DBS representations

We prepared detailed representations focused on accountability, insight, remediation, changed circumstances and future risk. The approach included:

• Accepting the genuine leadership and safeguarding failings rather than attempting to minimise them.
• Explaining the distinction between failures arising from senior leadership and management responsibilities and concerns about direct abusive, predatory or deliberately harmful conduct towards children.
• Presenting a detailed reflective statement and journal showing that our client understood the impact that unstable care, weak safeguarding and poor leadership can have on vulnerable children.
• Providing evidence of targeted training, including safeguarding, management of allegations and responsible-individual training, together with continuing reflection and learning.
• Obtaining supporting evidence from experienced professionals with safeguarding and residential-care knowledge, addressing her character, empathy, openness to feedback and ability to work safely with children.
• Explaining that she would not return to a director, registered-person or senior management role in children’s residential care.
• Focusing the DBS on whether any residual concern could be safely managed through supervised, non-managerial work rather than the much wider restriction created by barring.

Why insight and remediation mattered

A particularly important feature of the case was our client’s willingness to confront the effect of the failings on the children rather than simply relying on the absence of any intention to cause harm.

Her reflection addressed how instability, inconsistent safeguarding responses and weak leadership can leave children feeling unsafe, unheard and unsupported. She also recognised the limits of her own competence at the time and accepted that senior management in residential children’s care required a level of regulatory confidence, oversight and judgment that she had not demonstrated.

The remediation was therefore tied directly to the concerns raised. It was not simply a collection of training certificates. The evidence was used to demonstrate what she had learned, how her understanding had changed and why the same circumstances were unlikely to arise again.

A very different future role

The proposed future work was materially different from the role in which the concerns had arisen. Our client had decided that she would not return to a director, registered-person or senior management position in children’s residential care.

Instead, she hoped to undertake direct work with children in a structured environment, under supervision and without overall responsibility for safeguarding, staffing, regulatory compliance or the management of a residential service.

We argued that this distinction mattered when assessing future risk. The question was not whether she had previously been unsuited to a particular senior leadership role, but whether the evidence justified the conclusion that she was unsafe to undertake any regulated activity with children.

Why barring was not necessary

The representations focused the DBS on the risk that actually remained. The management context in which the failings had occurred had ended. Our client had undertaken substantial remediation, developed meaningful insight and proposed a future role with clear supervision and accountability.

We s that submitted that preventing her from undertaking all regulated activity with children would go further than was necessary to address the concerns identified. A supervised, non-managerial role would not recreate the circumstances that had led to the Ofsted findings and would provide safeguards around any residual risk.

The case therefore required a careful distinction between accountability for historic management failures and the separate question of whether barring from all regulated activity was necessary and proportionate.

The outcome: DBS took no further action

Following consideration of the representations and supporting evidence, the DBS decided to take no further action.

Our client was not placed on the Children’s Barred List and was therefore not prohibited from undertaking regulated activity with children.

The outcome demonstrates that even serious Ofsted and safeguarding concerns do not automatically determine the final outcome of a DBS barring case. Where appropriate, carefully evidenced insight, remediation, changed circumstances and a realistic assessment of future risk can materially affect the DBS decision.

What this case shows

This case illustrates why accepting genuine failings can sometimes make representations stronger rather than weaker. A credible response does not have to deny every criticism. It can acknowledge what went wrong, demonstrate a genuine understanding of the impact on vulnerable children, and then focus carefully on the risk the person presents now.

It also shows the importance of identifying the context in which the concerns arose. Being unsuitable for a senior leadership role does not necessarily mean that a person presents the same level of risk in every form of regulated activity. The proposed role, degree of supervision, remediation and evidence of insight may all be relevant to the assessment of future risk.

Comment from Jared McNally

“The strongest approach in this case was not to deny every criticism. Our client accepted that serious leadership failings had occurred and showed that she understood the impact those failings could have on vulnerable children. The important next question was what risk she presented now. She had undertaken substantial remediation and did not intend to return to the senior management role in which the concerns had arisen. We argued that being unsuited to that type of leadership position did not automatically mean she was unsafe to work with children in every capacity. That distinction was central to the case.”

Jared McNally, Clifford Johnston & Co

Specialist DBS barring solicitors

Our DBS Solicitors represents care professionals, teachers, healthcare workers and others facing DBS barring proceedings, including responses to minded-to-bar and intended-to-bar letters.

We can review the evidence relied upon by the DBS and prepare detailed representations addressing factual findings, insight, remediation, changed circumstances, future safeguarding risk and proportionality. If you have received a DBS minded-to-bar letter, early specialist advice can help identify the evidence and arguments most relevant to the final decision.