Net Solution Filters Bad Risks

Thu., May 14, 1998

By Doug Floyd dougf@spokesman.com

Once the volunteer spirit strikes and you’ve offered your services at the neighborhood school or day care center, who wants to wait for paperwork? Especially when the wait lasts weeks or months.

Before this year, however, that predicament often greeted civic-minded people who wanted to share their time and energy tutoring, coaching, chaperoning and mentoring young people.

No astute public agency or nonprofit organization would risk connecting adult volunteers to children without checking for criminal histories. It’s both the moral thing to do and a prudent safeguard against liability lawsuits.

But the Washington State Patrol commonly took months to conduct such a check and, depending on local policies and state law, the requesting organizations were restricted in how they could make use of the volunteers in the meantime.

If time was critical, you could get faster results through the FBI, but that would cost $50, something few public agencies can afford or would ask a volunteer to pay.

A rising volunteerism movement assured that the backlogs would get larger. Budget-conscious lawmakers were turning more responsibilities back to communities. Harsh sociological problems were focusing attention on the need of communities to rally around kids. Welfare reform was steering public assistance recipients who couldn’t find jobs into volunteer, community-service work.

Just in time, the Washington State Patrol completed testing of Washington Access to Criminal History, or WATCH, an Internet source where agencies can do their own background checks - free of charge to schools and nonprofit groups.

Nearly 400 organizations, mostly nonprofits, have established accounts already and 10 to 20 are added each day. Gradually, meanwhile, the backlog of pre-WATCH checks is being reduced.

That should please agencies such as the Spokane Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Center (SCAN), that still await background checks from the old system and as yet have no Internet access to take advantage of the new.

Internet-connected entities are responding enthusiastically. Since going online with do-it-yourself background checks, WATCH has been accessed more than 17,000 times.

If pre-WATCH experience continues, 4 to 8 percent of those checks will raise red flags - and that’s the real issue. More than the agencies, the clients they serve and the public at large should appreciate WATCH.

(For more information about WATCH, contact Tina Vigue at 360-705-5360 or tvigue@wsp.wa.gov.)

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