Letter: Eliminating risk

I read with incredulity the report by Fiona MacLeod (29 May) concerning the possibility of "thousand of Scots families facing police checks to host exchange trips", which clearly conveyed the impression that this was "a bad thing". I was astonished, then, to read your comment on this matter, which ridiculed the idea that the law might be applied in this way.

Surely all adults in a home that hosts such visits should be subject to the Disclosure Scotland checks, which apply to any adult who is to be officially in the care of any child who is not their own? This rule applies to school outings and trips. Adult helpers have to undergo such checks as they are deemed to be in loco parentis – even for a short period of time – when not under the direct supervision of a teacher (who has also been checked).

The introduction of such checks, we should remember, came about largely as a result of the careful consideration of the events leading up to the horrors wrought upon Dunblane Primary School by Thomas Hamilton – a man who, with hindsight, all agreed should have been identified as a risk long before.

I wonder what the attitude of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council would be to the costs and "intrusion" involved in such checks if some visiting child were to be sexually abused or worse by an unchecked adult with a record.

ALLAN STEWART

Warriston Gardens

Edinburgh