Disclosure Scotland makes Health and Care Award shortlist for PVG online accounts

Nominated in the Digital Service Transformation Award category for ‘PVG online accounts’, the Health and Care Awards recognises the achievements of individuals and teams working in the health, social care, and housing sectors who have made a significant impact to peoples’ lives and public services in Scotland. 

Membership of the Protecting Vulnerable Group (PVG) scheme shows that health and care professionals in Scotland can safely work with children and vulnerable adults. In a health care setting this can give extra confidence to employers and their patients and demonstrates that they have undergone rigorous police and background checks before starting a new role. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Disclosure Scotland successfully provided free PVG disclosures to a large volume of health and social care professionals. 

By moving to a digital first approach, in which all our PVG applications were processed online instead of paper applications, ‘PVG online’ offered a rapid response approach to checking someone’s suitability for a role and helped facilitate urgent recruitment drives across the health and social care sectors in challenging circumstances.  

This allowed organisations to carry out vital background checks, enabling frontline health and social care staff to be recruited more quickly and successfully placed within hospitals and care homes across Scotland - helping save lives.   

With the public launch of the PVG online account service to all service users on18 November 2024 Disclosure Scotland continues to reach thousands more people across Scotland.   

In partnership with Scottish Government’s ScotAccount, Disclosure Scotland is the first organisation to use a new online sign in and verification service and is leading the way for other public sector organisations in this area. ScotAccount delivers on Scotland’s Digital Strategy commitment to provide a secure and simple way for people to sign in and, if required, verify their identity in order to access public services online. This collaboration has enabled Disclosure Scotland to securely move away from using paper disclosure certificates to sharing disclosure information digitally, resulting in a quicker and more convenient online service for our customers. 

Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland, said: 

“This is a fantastic achievement for our flagship digital service, and we are delighted to be nominated for this award.  Alongside ScotAccount we are helping transform the way people access Scotland’s public services online.  

“Our PVG online account service is used by many different health and social care organisations and professionals throughout Scotland already. However, our journey to this point, arose from challenging circumstances.  

“While facing a global health pandemic, we swiftly moved our service online and through the provision of free PVGs for health and social care professionals we supported Covid-19 recruitment efforts in these areas.  Following the success of this, we have rolled out our online service so that everyone can benefit.  

“I would like to thank Disclosure Scotland and ScotAccount colleagues for their perseverance and hard work and the Health and Social Care sector who have supported us in making this service a reality and a digital success.” 

Trudy Nicolson, ScotAccount’s Programme Director, added:   

“The ScotAccount team is thrilled by this nomination for Disclosure Scotland’s Online Account service, and to be recognised as being a critical part of the digital transformation of a service that is having a significant impact to peoples’ lives and public services in Scotland.  

“We are delighted to continue to collaborate with Disclosure Scotland as more of their services are delivered online. 

“As ScotAccount continues to be adopted by Scotland’s public sector organisations this will make it easier for people to access public services saving time, money, and effort for both the user and the public service."