About Us

Safe Recruitment

The Checkpoint is fundamentally a recruitment agency specialising in the placement of permanent staff who work with vulnerable people in the UK.

These include:

• children in care
• adults and children with disabilities
• homeless people
• people in need of social support of all kinds.
  

Our Objective is simple

The Checkpoint aims to provide highly motivated, keen and reliable staff, in order to raise the standard of care and reduce the turnover of staff in this vital industry.

History

The Social Care market has an acute shortage of suitably qualified and more importantly motivated staff. A report by the Social Exclusion Unit of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in September 2003 noted that at any one time, there are 60,000 children in care. Some 41% are aged 10 or under. One in ten, i.e. 6,000 live in children's homes. Staff vacancy rates in children’s homes are 10% nationally and 18% in London. The national turnover rate is 15%.

It is against this difficult background that The Checkpoint seeks to make a real impact on the recruitment and retention difficulties that are endemic in this sector.

The systems we use have been developed over the past 8 years by Michael Hames, former Head of the Paedophilia Unit at New Scotland Yard. We specialise in the safe recruitment of staff using the recommendations of the 'Warner Report' and the 'Code of Practice for the Employment of Residential Child Care Workers', published in 1995.