The paperwork wall: DBS, PVG, share codes and the experience rule

In more than a hundred conversations with carers joining us this year, almost nobody has been stopped by something on their criminal record. They are stopped by a surname that does not match a passport, a certificate a former employer will not release, a visa that quietly forbids self-employed work, and a rule that counts only paid experience. Here is how to tell which wall you have hit, and whether clearing it takes an afternoon, three months, or is not possible.

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Almost nobody is blocked by their record

Carers often arrive braced for the wrong conversation, having rehearsed an explanation for something from years ago, or assuming a stalled application means they failed a check. Almost always it is administrative.

• Fixable in an afternoon: a profile name that does not match the document being checked, an upload that silently failed, the wrong document type, or a step that will not work on your device.
• Weeks to a few months: a new passport in your current name, a fresh enhanced check, a Scottish scheme record, or the slower paper route when a digital check cannot read your document.
• Not something we can fix: a visa whose conditions do not permit self-employed work, and, for now, not yet having a year of paid care experience.

The name wall: when your documents disagree with each other

This is the most common blocker, and the one carers least expect.

A carer coming back to work found her identity check and her DBS both stuck. Her passport still carried her maiden name, while her licence, her bank and everything she used daily carried her married name. Nobody doubted who she was, but the systems could not reconcile two names, and the answer was a new passport, at a fee and a wait she had not budgeted for.

Accented letters jam the same gate from another direction. A carer whose surname carries diacritics kept failing verification because the check could not process them. Our team ended up editing her profile name to match her passport, then back again to match her DBS application. As one of them put it, “I know it is a bit of a pain.”

• Pick the document that is your legal name of record, usually your passport, and make your profile match it exactly, including middle names and spelling.
• If your passport carries a former name, start the renewal now rather than after your application stalls, and check current processing times before you promise a client a start date.
• If your name has changed more than once, keep the papers that connect the names. You will be asked for the chain, not just the ends of it.

The certificate wall: whose DBS is it?

An experienced carer told us, during a routine onboarding call, that a previous employer was holding her enhanced certificate and a Scottish scheme record, and would not release copies. She had long assumed this was her own fault.

“I thought it was a me problem. You just explaining that, that makes sense.”

An enhanced check belongs to the person it is about, not the organisation that asked for it, and there is no reprint service. If the paper sits in someone else’s filing cabinet, the way back is a fresh application. For a self-employed carer that is quietly good news: a certificate you apply for yourself is yours to keep and to show to whoever you choose. See our guide to the enhanced DBS and the update service.

We check carers’ identity documents, right to work and DBS documents, and every carer completes our onboarding before they can be booked.

PrimeCarers is an introductory platform and does not provide, manage, supervise or clinically assess care. Clients remain responsible for checking carer documentation, interviewing carers, checking suitability for their specific needs, and agreeing the scope of care directly with the carer.

The update service is not the whole story

Carers on the update service reasonably ask why they must still send the certificate itself. A status check says it is current. It does not say what kind of check it was, whether it covered the adult barred list, or what it found. One carer argued this through, then landed somewhere firmer than our own policy.

“It should be compulsory. Everybody should be checked, for adults and for children.”

The sites that charge £80 to £100 for the wrong check

Search for a DBS check, click the first advert, and you may pay £80 to £100 for a basic check, which is not enough for care work.

“There are people out there who take all your money, and they still only give you a basic DBS.”

Use a link from us or a provider you have verified, and read the top of the certificate when it arrives: it should say Enhanced and list the barred list check. For the wider picture, see the scams that target carers. A legitimate check is a business expense, as our guide to paying tax as a self-employed carer explains.

Different nations, different checks

A DBS certificate does not cover the whole of the UK. Scotland runs its own scheme, usually called PVG, and Northern Ireland runs its own service. A carer who moves, or takes work across a border, can find the check she paid for is not the one she needs. One carer with an out of date DBS discovered mid application that a scheme record was what she needed.

Her second problem was rarer. Digital identity checks generally want a biometric passport, and older non-biometric passports and some travel documents cannot be used to apply online at all.

“They didn’t accept my passport because it’s a passport for stateless people.”

If that is you, start early, budget weeks rather than days, and tell us a paper route is in progress. We can extend your application window, and tell a waiting client in writing where your checks have got to, so they can decide whether to hold the work.

The right to work wall: what your visa actually permits

These are our hardest calls, because the person has usually done everything right. One carer had a fully approved DBS and an account that still would not open. Her sponsored skilled worker visa runs to 2028, and sponsored work is tied to the sponsor: it does not permit self-employment. Nothing about her competence was in question.

What we could tell her is that dependants on a visa often have looser conditions and may be able to work as self-employed carers in their own right, provided they meet the same experience requirement.

We are not immigration advisers and nothing here is immigration advice. Read the conditions printed on your own status and check current rules on gov.uk, or with a qualified adviser, before you spend money. Most carers now prove their right to work with a share code from the gov.uk service rather than paper, so generate one before your onboarding call. Share codes expire, so if yours has lapsed, make a new one rather than assuming the check failed.

The experience wall, and why we ask for a year of paid work

This is the wall we are least comfortable with, and we would rather explain it than pretend it turns nobody good away.

A nurse of thirty-five years, including a long stretch in intensive care, could not get through our application, because her recent caring had been informal: cash in hand, for the elderly father of a friend, who has since died.

“I feel really suitable for the role, and I could fulfil that role ten times over, but if I’m not allowed to, I don’t want to go any further.”

A young woman who had spent years helping her mother look after her younger brother, who uses a wheelchair and a feeding tube, called hoping that would count. A woman in her early sixties, who nursed her mother through four years of dementia to the end, wanted to offer companionship only, because personal care for strangers would take her somewhere she could not go again.

Our current policy is at least a year of professional, paid care experience, including for companionship work, because the house, the person and the risks are the same whatever the visit is called. We do not train, supervise or manage carers, and carers here work alone in someone’s home, often from the first visit, with people who are frail.

PrimeCarers is an introductory platform and does not provide, manage, supervise or clinically assess care. Clients remain responsible for checking carer documentation, interviewing carers, checking suitability for their specific needs, and agreeing the scope of care directly with the carer.

If experience is your wall, the invitation to come back is meant. Agencies and care providers do take people with no paid experience and train them, and a year there counts everywhere afterwards. Our notes on training for private carers and on becoming a self-employed carer are a place to start.

One caveat. If you have a long professional record and an online form has stopped you, tell us and send a screenshot. Sometimes it is the form and not the rule, and a person can read a career that a checkbox cannot.

When it is the phone, not the paperwork

One carer spent forty minutes on the phone with us trying to photograph a passport and finish a DBS step on her mobile. The browser kept redirecting, the camera would not open during the call, and she could not tell which of yesterday’s uploads had gone through.

“Where do they go? I did upload them yesterday. Where did they go then?”

None of that was her fault. A phone will not usually open its camera for a website while you are on a call on the same handset, so end the call for the photo steps and ring back. Upload one document at a time and wait for the confirmation. If you have a laptop, use it for the form and the phone only for photographs, taken flat, in daylight, all four corners in frame.

If your documents are in order and the work still is not coming, that is a different problem, and we have written about it in registered for years, never booked.

What to do next

1. Name the wall before you spend money. The timescales are very different, and carers routinely pay for a check that was never the blocker.
2. Make your name match one document, exactly. If your passport carries a former name, begin the renewal today and gather the papers that connect the names.
3. Apply for your own enhanced check and keep it. Put it on the update service, store the certificate where you can find it, and claim the cost as a business expense. A certificate in your own hands cannot be withheld.
4. Check your right to work conditions first. Read what is printed on your status, generate a fresh share code, and confirm current rules on gov.uk.
5. If you are stuck, call rather than guess. Most of these walls were only diagnosed because someone picked up the phone, and several turned out to be a spelling.

Related reading

• Enhanced DBS and the update service
• Self-employed carer documents
• The scams that target carers, and the clients who spot them first
• Registered for years, never booked
• Safeguarding runs both ways: staying safe as a self-employed carer