Background checks for care and domestic workers: what to run, where, and how often
What to check before someone enters a home, what the criminal record check is called in each English-speaking country, and how often to re-run it.
Updated 7 min read The Rostavo Team
Before anyone enters a client's home you should have five things on file: verified identity, proof of the right to work, a criminal record check at the correct level, at least two references, and any qualification the role requires. The criminal record check has a different name in every country, and getting the level wrong is the most common mistake agencies make.
This applies whether you place nannies, cleaners, dog walkers, housekeepers or carers. The duty is the same: you are the reason a stranger is standing in someone's hallway.
What should you check before a first placement?
Five things, in the order they are usually done.
Identity. A government photo ID plus a proof of address, seen against the person rather than emailed as a photo of a photo. Everything downstream is worthless if this is wrong.
Right to work. Country-specific, and the penalties for getting it wrong fall on you rather than on the worker. In the UK this is a statutory check with a defined list of acceptable documents and a share-code route for most non-citizens. In the US it is Form I-9. In Australia it is a visa entitlement check through VEVO.
Criminal record check, at the correct level. See the table below. The level matters more than most agencies realise, because the enhanced tiers are the only ones that check whether somebody has been barred from this exact kind of work.
References, taken by voice. Two, ideally from a previous agency or family rather than a friend. A written reference confirms employment. A five-minute phone call tells you whether they would have them back, which is the only question that matters.
Role qualifications. Paediatric first aid, safeguarding training, a driving licence, medication competency, animal first aid. Every one of these has an expiry date, which is where agencies get into trouble.
What is the criminal record check called in my country?
This is the part no one writes down in one place, so here it is.
| Country | What it is called | Who issues it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | DBS check: basic, standard, or enhanced | Disclosure and Barring Service | Enhanced plus barred list is the one for working with children or vulnerable adults |
| Scotland | PVG scheme membership | Disclosure Scotland | Membership is ongoing rather than a one-off certificate |
| Northern Ireland | AccessNI check | AccessNI | Basic, standard and enhanced, as in England |
| Ireland | Garda vetting | National Vetting Bureau | Required for work with children or vulnerable persons |
| United States | Background check through a consumer reporting agency | Private providers, county and state records | Regulated by the FCRA: written consent and a formal adverse action process are mandatory |
| Canada | Criminal record check, or vulnerable sector check | Local police, or accredited providers | The vulnerable sector check is the one for in-home care |
| Australia | National Police Check, plus a Working With Children Check | ACIC, plus the state body | The WWCC is state by state: Blue Card in Queensland, WWCC in New South Wales |
| New Zealand | Police vetting | New Zealand Police Vetting Service | Requires an approved requesting agency |
Two things to take from that table. First, there is no international check, so an agency placing someone who has lived abroad needs a check from each country of residence, and those take weeks. Second, the checks that matter most are the barred-list ones, because an ordinary criminal record check will not tell you that a regulator has specifically prohibited this person from this work.
In the US, note the process rather than just the result: the FTC's guidance for employers using consumer reports sets out the consent and adverse-action steps, and skipping them is its own liability regardless of what the check says. In the UK, start from GOV.UK's guide to DBS levels rather than a provider's sales page, because providers have an interest in selling you the dearest tier.
How often should checks be re-run?
A check is a photograph, not a guarantee. It tells you about the day it was issued.
There is rarely a legal re-check interval, which is why practice varies so widely. What agencies actually do:
- Criminal record checks: every one to three years, and more often for anyone working unsupervised with children. The UK's DBS Update Service and Scotland's PVG both make this cheaper by keeping the record live rather than reissuing it.
- Right to work: when the permission expires, which for a visa holder is a hard date you must diarise. Continuing to employ somebody past it is the single most expensive clerical error available to a small agency.
- Qualifications: on their own expiry. Paediatric first aid is typically three years. Safeguarding training is commonly one to two.
- After any break of six months or more, re-verify everything. People's circumstances change while they are not working for you.
Why do agencies let certificates lapse?
Because the failure is silent, and because spreadsheets do not interrupt anybody.
The first check is never the problem. An agency vetting a new worker is paying attention. The problem is worker number thirty-one, whose first-aid certificate expired in March, discovered in July because a family asked. Nothing broke. No alert fired. The booking went out as normal, because the rota and the compliance record were two different documents and only one of them was being read.
That failure has a shape worth recognising:
- The certificate expires and nothing happens, because an expiry date in a spreadsheet is just text.
- The worker keeps being scheduled, because the scheduling view has no idea.
- It surfaces when a client asks, an inspector asks, or something goes wrong.
- The agency now has a period of weeks or months where it cannot evidence compliance, which is worse than the lapse itself.
What does good practice actually look like?
Four things, and none of them is complicated:
Every document lives on the person's record, with its expiry date as a date rather than as a note. A date can be sorted, filtered and alerted on. A note cannot.
The warning comes before the expiry, not after. Thirty days is the usual window, which is enough time to rebook a first-aid course but not so much that it gets ignored.
Check status is visible where you assign work. This is the one that actually prevents the failure above. If the person's compliance state is on the screen where you choose who takes Thursday, an expired worker cannot be scheduled by accident.
Somebody owns the review. A monthly fifteen-minute pass over everyone expiring in the next sixty days catches what automation misses, including the people who have quietly stopped responding.
Rostavo does the first three: documents sit on the worker profile with real expiry dates, alerts fire ahead of time, background check requests can be sent and tracked without leaving the system, and status shows up at the point of assignment. The fourth one is still a human job, and we would be lying if we said otherwise.
Does vetting actually win you work?
Yes, and increasingly it is the first question rather than the last.
Families compare agencies on a short list of things, and "how do you check your people" is now near the top of it, particularly for childcare and elder care. Being able to answer specifically, naming the check level and the re-check interval, separates you from the agency that says "all our staff are fully vetted" and cannot say what that means.
It matters commercially in a second way too. If a client or an inspector asks you to evidence compliance for every worker who attended last month, that should be a report you can produce in a minute. For most agencies it is a day of cross-referencing, and the day is the real cost of running compliance in a spreadsheet.
This applies across every trade we serve: nanny and babysitting agencies, home care and senior care, cleaning companies, pet care and household staffing.
Requirements change and vary by jurisdiction. Check the current rules with the issuing body for your country before relying on anything here. If you spot something out of date, tell us: hello@rostavo.com.