The Business Services Authority (BSA) has opted into the Care Leaver Covenant scheme which is a national inclusion programme that supports care leavers aged 16-25 to live independently. The BSA is committed to supporting Care Leavers under our Diversity, Inclusion and Social Mobility strategy.
To support this initiative, there is an application question on BSA adverts that help identify applicants who have had experience in the care system.
Candidates can indicate their status by answering the application question ‘Are you a care leaver, had any experience of being in care, or of being within the Care-System?’. If 'Yes' is selected in answer to this question, the candidate is then asked if they would like to be considered under the Guaranteed Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum criteria as specified in the Person Specification.
How is a Care Experienced candidate highlighted to the Recruiting Manager (RM)?
Once the vacancy and candidates have progressed into the ‘Shortlisting: Evaluate’ stage, a star icon will be present within the priority field indicating all candidates who are Care Experienced.
If you are unsure what any of the icons mean within this column, you can hover your mouse over the icon for further information.
Are Care Experienced candidates guaranteed an interview?
If the candidate has declared they are Care Experienced and opted into the Guaranteed Interview Scheme, they should only be reviewed against the essential role requirements (Shortlisting criteria) for a role; if they meet this then they should be invited to Interview.
Special attention should be paid to these applications and a second review of the scoring can be carried out to ensure the scoring is correct.
What if a Care Experienced candidate is not invited to interview?
If the Lead Shortlister does not invite candidates with the ‘Care Experienced’ status to Interview, the following message appears in Trac when confirming the Interview information:
“Please ensure that you have carefully considered all of these applicants and can confirm that they do not meet the basic requirements in the person specification that would guarantee their progression to the next stage.
If you are in any doubt, please click 'Cancel' below and review the applicants in Shortlisting with icons in the "Pri" column again (you can click on the column heading to list all of them together). In all cases, please add a note to explain why they were not moved into the next stage of recruitment."
Further Guidance
- Information on the NHS Universal Family (Care Leaver Covenant) Programme can be found on NHS England's website.