EMPLOYMENT · HOUSEHOLD WORK · SAFEGUARDING · TRUST
DBS urges families to carry out more checks before hiring household workers
The Disclosure and Barring Service has launched a new campaign urging
parents and carers to look beyond informal recommendations when hiring
self-employed workers and personal employees. The move follows rule
changes that widened access to Enhanced DBS checks for some eligible
workers, but the agency is also stressing that criminal-record
information should be only one part of a broader hiring decision.
Families inviting someone into their home are being encouraged to carry
out more structured checks before deciding who to hire.
The Disclosure and Barring Service has launched a public-awareness
campaign called Every Check Helps, aimed at parents and
carers employing self-employed workers and personal employees.
The campaign follows changes introduced in January 2026 that allowed some
eligible self-employed workers and personal employees to apply for
Enhanced DBS checks for the first time.
In some roles, where the legal criteria are met, those checks can also
include searches of the Children's or Adults' Barred Lists.
The message from DBS is straightforward:
They may be able to get a DBS check. Families can ask to see it.
But the more important part of the campaign may be what DBS says should
happen next.
A DBS certificate should not be treated as the entire hiring decision.
The agency says parents and carers should consider DBS information
alongside references, qualifications, experience, recommendations and
their own judgement.
A wider change in household recruitment
Hiring someone to work inside a private home has traditionally been one
of the least formal areas of recruitment.
A cleaner may come recommended by a neighbour.
A tutor may be referred by another parent.
A carer may be introduced through a friend.
A personal assistant may arrive through a local community network.
Those recommendations can be valuable.
But they are not the same thing as a structured check.
The new DBS campaign appears designed to move more private hiring toward
the kind of evidence-based recruitment already familiar in larger
organisations.
The rules changed in January
From 21 January 2026, some self-employed workers and personal employees
became eligible to apply for Enhanced DBS checks where the role itself
qualifies.
Before that change, access to higher-level checks was more limited for
people working directly for private individuals.
The change matters because many household roles involve a level of access
and trust that would be considered significant in almost any other
employment setting.
A worker may have access to:
- A private home
- Children
- Older or vulnerable relatives
- Keys and alarm codes
- Personal possessions
- Financial or household information
- Periods when nobody else is present
Yet many such relationships still begin with little more than a
recommendation and an informal conversation.
Not every household worker is eligible for an Enhanced check
This is an important limitation.
The new rules do not mean every cleaner, housekeeper, gardener or other
domestic worker can automatically obtain an Enhanced DBS certificate.
Eligibility depends on the work being performed and the people the worker
will be working with.
DBS guidance distinguishes between different types of roles and different
levels of checks.
Some work involving children or vulnerable adults may qualify for an
Enhanced check, potentially with a barred-list search.
Other household roles may not.
The legal basis for the check therefore matters just as much as the
existence of the certificate.
Families cannot simply order a check on someone
Another important part of the guidance is that private individuals cannot
apply for a DBS check on somebody else's behalf.
Where a self-employed worker or personal employee is eligible, they must
apply through the appropriate DBS process themselves.
The family can then ask to see the resulting certificate where it is
appropriate to the role.
This creates an important distinction between checking and surveillance.
A household employer does not gain unrestricted access to somebody's
personal criminal-history information simply because they are considering
hiring them.
A clear DBS certificate is not a guarantee
That may be the most important point in the entire campaign.
A DBS check can provide useful information about certain criminal records
and, where legally applicable, barred-list status.
It cannot tell a family everything about how somebody will behave in
their home.
It does not automatically establish:
- Whether they were reliable in previous employment
- Whether previous clients would hire them again
- Whether they regularly arrived on time
- Whether they handled property carefully
- Whether disputes occurred
- How those disputes were resolved
- Whether their claimed experience can be verified
That is why DBS itself recommends considering the certificate alongside
references, qualifications, experience and other evidence.
The reference problem remains
References are one of the obvious next steps.
But a reference is only as useful as the information behind it.
Families hiring household workers should consider basic questions such as:
- Does the referee actually exist?
- Did they genuinely employ or engage this person?
- For how long?
- What work did the person perform?
- Would they hire them again?
A phone number supplied by the applicant is not automatically an
independently verified reference.
Wherever reasonable, the identity of the referee and the underlying
relationship should be capable of confirmation.
Household work creates an unusual trust relationship
Many professional relationships involve supervision.
Household work often involves the opposite.
The point of hiring a cleaner, housekeeper, nanny, tutor, personal
assistant or carer may be precisely that they can perform the work without
constant supervision.
Trust therefore becomes part of the job itself.
A person may be given a front-door key before the relationship is more
than a few weeks old.
They may work around jewellery, documents, medication, computers,
children or vulnerable relatives.
In many cases, the employer is not an HR professional.
They are simply a family trying to decide whether another person is safe
to let into their private life.
What should families actually check?
A proportionate household hiring process does not need to resemble
corporate recruitment.
But it can still be structured.
Depending on the role, a family might consider:
- Identity
- Right to work where applicable
- Relevant DBS information where the role is eligible
- Previous employment or client relationships
- References
- Relevant qualifications
- Experience
- Professional insurance where appropriate
- Role-specific training
The purpose is not to collect as much personal information as possible.
It is to establish enough reliable information to make a proportionate
decision about the particular job.
Housekeepers expose the limits of conventional checks
Consider an experienced housekeeper.
She has worked in private homes for 12 years.
Five families would happily employ her again.
She has held keys to expensive properties.
She has worked while homeowners were abroad.
She has built years of trust.
Yet when she approaches the sixth household, much of that accumulated
professional reputation may still have to be reconstructed through
telephone calls and references.
A background check can establish certain facts.
It cannot automatically carry 12 years of earned trust from one household
to the next.
The same problem can hide negative history
Fragmentation can work in the opposite direction too.
Imagine a household worker moves through a series of private engagements.
One family experiences repeated problems.
Another experiences something similar.
Neither incident leads to a criminal conviction.
Nothing necessarily appears on a DBS certificate.
The next family may have no practical way to know that the same pattern
has arisen elsewhere unless previous employers are contacted and willing
to discuss it.
Again, this is not a weakness in the DBS system.
It reflects the fact that criminal-record checking and professional
reputation answer different questions.
DBS is one layer, not the whole picture
The Disclosure and Barring Service appears to be making that distinction
deliberately.
Its campaign does not tell families that obtaining a certificate settles
the hiring decision.
Instead, it places DBS information alongside:
- References
- Qualifications
- Experience
- Recommendations
- Personal judgement
That is a more realistic view of trust.
There is rarely one document capable of answering every important
question about another person.
The bigger issue is continuity
Household employment presents the same problem seen in many other parts
of the labour market.
Identity travels.
Qualifications travel.
A DBS certificate can travel within the rules governing its use.
But professional experience and reputation frequently remain scattered
between the people and organisations that witnessed them.
That can make good workers repeatedly prove themselves from the
beginning.
It can also make meaningful patterns harder for the next employer to see.
More checks do not have to mean more suspicion
There is a danger in discussing household-worker screening as though the
person entering the home should automatically be treated as a threat.
That would be both unfair and counterproductive.
Better checking should work in both directions.
It should help families identify genuine risk.
But it should also allow an experienced, trustworthy worker to demonstrate
a strong professional history without repeatedly starting from zero.
Verification should make trust easier to establish where it has been
earned.
DBS campaign points to a wider change in how families hire
The Every Check Helps campaign is modest in scope.
It does not create a universal household-worker screening system.
It does not make every domestic role eligible for an Enhanced DBS check.
And it does not promise that a certificate can predict future behaviour.
What it does signal is a change in expectations.
Informal trust is increasingly being supplemented by verifiable
information.
For families hiring someone who may be entering their home, caring for a
relative or working with a child, that distinction is significant.
The question is no longer simply: “Who recommended them?”
Increasingly, it is:
“What can we actually verify?”
Important: Eligibility for Standard, Enhanced and
barred-list DBS checks depends on the role and activities being carried
out. Not every household worker is eligible for every level of check.
Private individuals should consult current DBS eligibility guidance before
asking a worker for a particular type of certificate.
