Bitter Sweet Sixteen

Adelah Bilal, a volunteer working with the education charity WORLDwrite, challenges the government's Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checking of 16 to 18 year olds. As soon as Adelah celebrated her sixteenth birthday she turned from being seen as a vulnerable member of society to a potential paedophile. Now she will need to be vetted before she can continue to look after her little brother and his friends in the playground or volunteer in her local community. In this report Adelah interviews Josie Appleton from the Manifesto Club who runs the Campaign Against Vetting and the parents of two small children to consider the impact of vetting. Adelah concludes that her generation are growing up under a cloud of suspicion and vetting will discourage her peers from developing their own judgement about who to trust.

Recommended links:

• Article by Patrick Hayes: If you're 16, you're a potential abuser
• Manifesto Club's Campaign Against Vetting
• Vetting under-18s: An education in mistrust
• Telegraph article: Nearly 127,000 children forced to have CRB checks every year
• Article by Jennie Bristow: Why parents should oppose vetting