Mother applying for primary school job is wrongly branded 'drug-dealing alcoholic' in Home Office blunder

Her three children all attended the school and teachers had asked her a couple of times to consider helping out.

But a Home Office agency set up to vet those working with children claimed that Mrs Hodgson was a drug-dealing alcoholic with convictions for assaulting three police officers.

Amanda Hodgson with two of her children, Sam and Danielle, outside their home: 'I am guilty until proven innocent'

And instead of admitting a case of mistaken identity, the Criminal Records Bureau told Mrs Hodgson, 36, she would have to face a police interview and have her fingerprints taken which will then be checked against every unsolved crime in the country.

Yesterday Mrs Hodgson said she was horrified that she would have to prove her innocence.

She said: 'The process is not fair. In a court of law the defendant is innocent until proven guilty but I am guilty until proven innocent.

'It is really embarrassing and I've had to explain to my 12-year-old son that his mum isn't a criminal and I am not going to jail.'

Mrs Hodgson, of Preston, needed a CRB report when she applied to become a welfare assistant at St Leonard's School.

The four-page CRB disclosure said that Amanda Jane Hodgson was convicted of assaulting three police officers in November 1989.

In 1998 she appeared before magistrates charged with battery where she was given a conditional discharge.

In November last year, she accepted a police caution after being arrested for common assault.

A statement from Lancashire Police included in the documentation, said: 'Information held that in November 2007, the applicant was under psychiatric care and was on methadone (but she had not taken heroin in four years) although information held in 2006 was that the applicant was allegedly dealing drugs.

'Concerns have also been raised regarding the mental health and alcoholic problems suffered by the applicant.'

Mrs Hodgson told the CRB they had sent the criminal record of a woman with the same name and date of birth.

She also told them she took the surname of Hodgson only after she married in 1993, four years after the first offences.

However officials said it would be her responsibility to prove her innocence.

Mrs Hodgson, whose husband Tony, 44, is a joiner, said: 'To have my fingerprints taken in the first place is bad enough but then to be told they will be cross-checked against all unsolved crimes is ridiculous. I have done nothing wrong.

'I was told that they would investigate to try to rectify it by cross-checking paperwork. But that hasn't worked, so it is down to me to prove my innocence.

'We are just normal people and the CRB don't realise how much heartache this is causing.'

A spokesman for the CRB said it carried out almost 16million disclosures with an accuracy rate of 99.98 per cent, and asked for a person's fingerprints and passport photo only if all other investigations failed.

He said: 'We err on the side of caution because the alternative may result in appropriate information not being released which could put children or vulnerable adults at risk.'

Earlier this month it emerged that almost 700 applicants for jobs in teaching, nursing, childminding and volunteer work were falsely accused of wrongdoing by the Criminal Records Bureau.