So, my local Girl Scout Council is now requiring criminal background checks–of anyone who oversees cookie sales, and eventually of all leaders as well.
I have about as squeaky clean a criminal record as you can get, but I still have deep privacy concerns about this. My cookie parent is even more concerned, enough so that she probably won’t be signing the forms in question. Which has me questioning whether I should sign them, either.
Has anyone other been subjected to, or refused to be subjected to, a criminal background check? Anyone have any opinions/insights into same?
My deeper concern is that, from the googling I’m doing, many groups that work with kids are requiring such checks now. I mean, whether I’m with Scouting forever or not, I plan to keep working with kids, writing for kids, speaking to kids. My fear is this issue isn’t going to go away, and is only going to grow larger.
Yet having my personal details handed over to a random hired security company makes me deeply uneasy.
Almost as uneasy as the fellow leader who shrugged and informed me at a leader meeting that, if I didn’t have a criminal history anyway, a criminal background check shouldn’t be a concern. Because she’s hardly alone in that attitude, of course.