Social workers and care staff are more than familiar with the vagaries of the Criminal Records Bureau.
So now is a mother from Wiltshire, who found herself registered as a risk to children when she applied to volunteer as a Sunday school teacher.
Her "crime"? She left four of her children unattended briefly while they played in a park. She accompanied the fifth to a shop.
A crime? Hardly. Irresponsible? Perhaps, although the expression "safety in numbers" does spring to mind. Even then, I would argue that, by accompanying one of her children to the shop, the mother was in fact acting responsibly.
But police officers noticed her absence and, presumably with so little else to do, rather than just speak to her went to the trouble of placing her details with the CRB.
Now the mother is listed with the real violators of humanity simply because she was doing the best by her children in the circumstances.
Anyone checking the woman's details will be told that she is a risk to children. Now what do those words mean to most of us?
The mother is not the first to fall foul of this system.
Last year, a deputy head teacher was fired when an enhanced CRB check returned allegations of abuse, even though the allegations were weak and were never heard in a trial.
And there are many others. The Daily Telegraph reports that over the past five years more than 12,000 disputes over inaccurate CRB checks have been upheld.
The principles behind the CRB are undoubtedly sound. But questions must be raised about the register's accuracy and fairness, or else gossip will become more important than fact. And that will let us all down.
If only the architects of the Welfare Reform White Paper could have such 'risk' notices placed on their CRB records. For it is such social engineers that are of far greater risk to society.
And the Welfare Reform White Paper would also:
- force adults fleeing domestic violence into 'work related activity' before they feel ready
- deny genuine disabled claimants appropriate support toward preparing themselves for economic independence under their own terms, as privatised scheme providers step in to over-rule disabled people's rights to self-management. (Atos Medical Services are already saying that people I know to be genuinely disabled or in severe health problems are not disabled enough for disability benefits entitlement, for example)
- (I'll leave others to list below risks to society imposed by Welfare Reform White Paper architects that I have not listed)