Incorporating a good DBS practice is essential for any charity that works with children or vulnerable adults.  However, establishing a practice can raise many questions and potential costs as well.  Do you have to do a DBS check on every volunteer?  What is the best way of doing this?   How regularly do you need to do these? 

At our food bank, we had almost 60 volunteers who worked for us on a regular basis.  We decided that DBS checks were required for all regular volunteers who interacted with food bank visitors (doing registration, helping with support, taking orders), but not needed for volunteers who focused on other areas (packing bags, deliveries, stock rotation etc). 

We used an online service, Disclosure Services, to get a standard check for the relevant volunteers (Enhanced DBS check not required, as per government guidelines).  We used this one, as it was relatively cheap (currently £33 per application) and easy to do online, but other services are available.   A standard check usually comes back within 5 days, so this process was easy to incorporate, once a volunteer had completed their trial period. 

Some volunteers had existing DBS certificates from their work or other volunteering roles.  In this case, we accepted these existing certificates, rather than complete a new check, but kept a copy of the certificate on file and made a note of renewal date (whilst technically there is no expiry date for DBS, best practice dictates that a certificate should be renewed at least every 3 years).