Safe Recruitment for Employers and Managers

Safe recruitment training for managers and HR leads delivered at your workplace or online. Half a day or a full day. The legally grounded recruitment process that keeps barred individuals out and gives you a recruitment file that holds up at inspection.

Course Overview

Most recruitment failures don’t come from one obvious red flag that someone waved through. They come from a string of smaller decisions that each looked reasonable on its own.

An employment gap gets noticed and then quietly dropped because the candidate interviewed well. A reference comes back vague and non-committal and gets filed anyway because chasing it felt awkward. An interview runs entirely on what the candidate has done, never on how they behaved when something went wrong. A DBS certificate arrives clean, and the file gets closed, as if that one document was ever meant to be the whole answer.

None of those decisions feels like the moment safeguarding failed. But add them together across a recruitment process, and that is exactly what has happened, often without anyone in the building realising it until something goes wrong months or years later.

This course gives managers, HR leads, registered managers and anyone with hiring responsibility a recruitment process that holds together end-to-end: advertising, shortlisting, interviewing, checking, deciding and documenting. It is built around the legal duty under Regulation 19: Fit and Proper Persons Employed of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, which requires providers to be able to evidence, for every member of staff, that they are of good character and fit for the role. Full details on what that means in practice sit in CQC’s Regulation 19 guidance.

Course Details

  • Duration: Half day or full day, depending on the depth your team needs
  • Delivery: Face-to-face in-house, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams
  • Certificate: CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Safe Recruitment for Employers
  • Awarding organisations: CPD-Accredited
  • Validity: No formal expiry. Refresher recommended following regulatory changes or a shift in who holds recruitment responsibility
  • Group size: Maximum 12 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for anyone who makes or influences a hiring decision in a regulated or safeguarding-sensitive setting.

  • Registered managers and deputy managers in care settings
  • HR professionals and recruitment leads
  • Directors and service owners with sign-off on hiring decisions
  • Managers in schools, early years settings, and voluntary or community organisations
  • Anyone newly given recruitment, onboarding or DBS responsibility
  • Teams preparing for CQC assessment or responding to inspection feedback about recruitment records

Not sure whether this is the right starting point for your team? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.

The Legal Requirement

Under Regulation 19: Fit and Proper Persons Employed of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, CQC-regulated providers must ensure that everyone employed in a regulated activity is of good character, holds the qualifications, competence, skills and experience the role needs, and is fit, physically and mentally, to carry it out. Providers must also hold the information specified in Schedule 3 of the Regulations for every member of staff, and that file has to be capable of demonstrating, not just asserting, that the duty was met.

That duty sits alongside the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, which makes it a criminal offence to knowingly permit a barred individual to work in a regulated activity with children or vulnerable adults. The Act maintains two barred lists, one for children and one for adults, and an amendment in 2025 extended the Disclosure and Barring Service’s power to share barred list information directly with police forces. The direction of travel is towards more information sharing, not less.

Where Regulation 19 is not met, the CQC can refuse registration or take enforcement action. With the regulator targeting a significant increase in published assessments through 2026, a recruitment file that cannot stand up to scrutiny is a live risk rather than a theoretical one.

What the Day Covers

All content reflects current CQC, DBS and Skills for Care guidance throughout. Topics covered include:

  • The legal framework: Regulation 19, Schedule 3, and the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006
  • Role design and safer advertising: building safeguarding in before the first application lands
  • Shortlisting: spotting and exploring risk indicators rather than screening them out silently
  • Values-based and behavioural interviewing techniques
  • Employment history gaps: how to question them, what to record, and what the Equality Act 2010 requires when you do
  • References: requesting them properly, reading what they don’t say, and following up on evasive answers
  • DBS checks: the four levels, eligibility, the two barred lists, and the DBS Update Service
  • Decision-making: building a recruitment decision that is evidenced and defensible, not just felt right at the time
  • Recruitment records: what to hold, for how long, and under what legal basis
  • Post-recruitment oversight: induction, supervision and ongoing fitness to practise
  • Making a referral to the DBS: when the duty applies and how the process works

Every course is also built to include your industry-specific common risks and your organisation’s incident reporting systems as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Both formats cover the same content and the same decision-making practice.

Groups are capped at 12 to ensure every learner gets sufficient time for discussion. Every session is built around your working environment, your sector’s risks, and your internal reporting procedures. We also design each course to incorporate your recruitment documentation, your organisation’s DBS and reference processes, and any previous inspection feedback on recruitment records. If you haven’t reviewed your recruitment arrangements recently, we can guide you through what that might involve during the enquiry process.

Delivery includes:

  • Real recruitment case studies drawn from serious case reviews and inspection findings
  • Scenario-based decision-making around employment gaps, references and interview responses
  • Review of your own recruitment documentation and record-keeping against what Regulation 19 expects
  • Direct discussion of any inspection feedback your organisation has already received on recruitment

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Safe Recruitment for Employers.

There is no fixed legal renewal period, but a refresher is worth booking when DBS or CQC guidance changes, when your recruitment process is revised, or when someone new takes on hiring responsibility. Our Adult Safeguarding Level 1 and 2 course is the natural companion for teams who want safeguarding awareness and safer recruitment covered together.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

  • 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
  • All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
  • We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey.

All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Groups are capped at 12 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

Is safer recruitment training a legal requirement?

Not as a named, mandatory course. But the legal duty behind it is substantial. Under Regulation 19, CQC-regulated providers must run robust recruitment procedures and hold Schedule 3 information for every member of staff. Training is one of the clearest ways to show that the people making hiring decisions are competent to meet that duty, and recruitment failures are something inspectors look at closely because, unlike a lot of regulatory gaps, they can directly enable harm.

What checks must be completed before employing someone in a regulated activity?

At minimum: verified identity and right to work in the UK, satisfactory references, a verified employment history including any gaps, and the correct level of DBS check for the role. Where the role involves regulated activity with children or vulnerable adults, an Enhanced DBS check with barred list information is a legal requirement under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006. Every one of those checks needs to be documented. A check that only exists in someone’s memory is not a check that exists for inspection purposes.

How should gaps in employment history be handled?

Every gap gets explored and explained. Plenty of gaps are entirely innocent: caring responsibilities, study, ill health, travel. Some are not, and the only way to tell the difference is to ask, listen properly, and record both the question and the answer. A gap that goes unexplained should inform the decision. A gap that is simply not noticed is a safeguarding failure waiting to happen, and questioning it properly has to stay within what the Equality Act 2010 allows.

When does an employer have to refer someone to the DBS?

Where an employer dismisses someone, or lets them resign, because they have harmed a child or vulnerable adult, or would have been dismissed for it had they not resigned first, there is a legal duty to make a referral to the DBS. Not making that referral when it is required is itself a criminal offence, and it is one of the most widely misunderstood parts of the system. A lot of employers assume it only applies in the most extreme cases. It does not. We deliver this training across Greater Manchester, the wider North West, and nationally.

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Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from the Care Quality Commission, the Disclosure and Barring Service, Skills for Care, and current UK legislation, including the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, the Data Protection Act 2018, and the Equality Act 2010.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: June 2026 | Next review: June 2027

This page is for general guidance only and reflects current UK legislation and CQC, DBS and Skills for Care guidance at the date of review. It does not constitute legal advice. This course supports safer recruitment principles and practice. It does not replace an organisation’s own HR policies, legal advice, or its regulatory responsibilities under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Employers remain responsible for ensuring their recruitment processes comply with current UK legislation and CQC requirements.

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