I appreciate I am asking how long is a piece of string but for those who have been through the process of discharging SHPOs... can you give me a timeframe of how it panned out for you please?
I know different areas will have different backlogs, there's a fat bloke dressed in red making his annual appearance next month etc
Having endured 5 draining years, I've sent my application off and I'm told 'the spring' but I'd hope it'd be quicker or might that sound about right?

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Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

Excuse the mini-rant. Anyone else fed up with when you're reaching out to talk about employment and you mention criminal record, it's assumed you just want to work on a building site. I understand that maybe the majority of us scallywags who break the law perhaps fit that bill, but for those of us who don't... 

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Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

Thanks. Great idea and info. It's often these simple yet good ideas that elude my brain! Cheers

Well one thing I found fairly useful was actually Indeed and Glassdoor for application questions. Basically just Googling various companies like "Does [COMPANY] DBS/Disclosure check" then, depending on the size of the company, you'll tend to find a few people asking the same question on either of those sites and typically you'll get an answer.

In my experience the ones that don't do a DBS/Disclosure check seldom ask about convictions in their application form. It can usually give you a rough indicator if its worth pursuing or if you're wasting your time.

Great news. Obviously you don't want to give away any personal details, just wondering the best way to find something the same/similar?

Yeah, I mean, its retail - It isn't really a sector I wanted to get back into and I left it years ago for a reason but I can't really be that picky and at least its something to get me going again and giving me that routine and sense of purpose again a bit.

The scheme definitely seems to be working well for others too, a chap in my social work group sessions had to leave our session schedule because he ended up with a job due to it too, which is great!

Really good news. This is the exact reason why I started this post. To give us some glimmer of hope there is a way out of this mess. I am in the early stages of trying to do something for myself. In the self employment route. I wish we did something like that scheme down here. That would be amazing. I did hear from another PO that she had another success story about someone in our position getting a job in a recycling place. To be honest the job sounds awful. But it's got to be better than sitting here every day for the next few years. 

Yeah, I haven't changed my surname but now I tend to go by my formal name as opposed to my common name (and what I was reported under). So thing along of the lines of being called John and I now go by Johnathan. When you Google that version of my name only a handful of things come up for me and they're all music related so no issues there.

There's obviously always the chance someone I know might come in but it's just one of those things that I'll just have to deal with if it happens. I don't feel it's a good idea to stress out about something that may never happen.

punter99: I'd rather not, just from a safeguarding point of view I hope you understand, it's definitely nothing personal, but what I will say is it's a large retail group in the UK that deals in food.

Really good news. Sounds like a model employer. Are you able to give the name of the company? 

I was always nervous about the googling aspect. That’s why I changed my surname so if people chose to they don’t find anything. Has worked well for my role as people obviously know my new surname.

Have you thought about what to do on the situation if not only a colleague but a customer was to find out and challenge you? Put something in place to obviously protect you in such a situation? Might be worth considering.