Social care staff entry costs

Staff joining the social care workforce will have their Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) check costs paid until the 31 March 2023. 

In this guide

• overview
• eligibility
• how to apply
• scheme background

Overview

You may be eligible to have your PVG check costs paid if you are starting a new job in:

• certain roles within the social care sector
• comparable roles in justice and children’s services

Cost and dates covered

PVG checks cost between £18 and £59. 

The scheme has been backdated to 1 October 2022.

Find out more

You can find out more about fees for PVG checks on the Mygov portal

Eligibility

To qualify you must:

• have started a new job or taken up a new position with your existing employer in an eligible role (see below)
• have applied for a PVG check between 1 October 2022 and no later than 31 March 2023 - any applications outside these dates will not be eligible

In all other cases, for example if your employer has a policy of rechecking existing staff, PVG costs must be paid as normal.

Eligible roles

To be eligible for this trial, you must be working in a new role of:

• manager
• supervisor
• practitioner
• support worker

and be working in one of the following areas:

• adult services
• care homes
• care at home services
• housing support
• day care services
• children’s services
• residential childcare
• residential school care accommodation
• justice services
• offender accommodation

Eligible roles for personal assistants

• any personal assistants directly paid by their employer who receives their funding via self-directed support option 1 and/or Independent Living Fund Scotland

How to apply

You can apply for for your PVG from Disclosure Scotland via the Mygov portal  

When you come to the ‘position applied for’ field, you must type in “FSC” followed by the name of the actual position. Disclosure Scotland will use this to ensure you are not charged for your application and your application is prioritised.

When asked to enter a payment method, select ‘my organisation will pay via invoice’ even if your employer usually asks you to pay for your own PVG checks by card payment. This will ensure that you will not be charged.

Personal assistants who work for an organisation

Some organisations refer to their care workers as personal assistants.

If you are a personal assistant working for an organisation, you should follow the above process.

Personal assistants paid directly by an individual

If you are a personal assistant paid directly by an individual, you should apply from Disclosure Scotland via the Mygov portal and send this by email. You can also request a paper form from Disclosure Scotland if you need to.

In the:

• payment section of the email form
• card number field if using the paper form

you should enter the text ‘FSC’ in the field ‘9 digit payment reference number’.

Disclosure Scotland will use this text to identify PVG applications that you will not be charged for and to prioritise your application.

Backdated claims for PVG costs

If you have already applied for PVG for a role eligible for this fee waiver on or after 1 October 2022, you should apply to the Finance Team at Disclosure Scotland for a refund.

More information on refunds from Disclosure Scotland is available on the Mygov portal

Contact

If you have any questions about this trial you can email: ascworkforce@gov.scot

You can also contact Disclosure Scotland: 

• by emailing their operations management team 
• by calling their helpline on 0300 020 0040 Monday to Thursday 9am to 4pm or Friday 9am to 3:30pm

Background to the scheme

We have reintroduced these measures because we recognise the severity of the issues currently affecting this sector.

These measures are intended to help encourage more staff into the profession, by removing one of the financial barriers to entry.