LAWYERS are going to court to overturn the Health Minister’s refusal to pay for special therapeutic care in the UK for vulnerable children from Jersey.

Law firm Hanson Renouf are seeking judicial review of Health Minister Ben Shenton’s refusal to pay for specialist care in a United Kingdom home for children they have represented in previous cases.

Senator Shenton says that the care costs up to £1m per year and that there is no money in his budget to pay for it.

And he has reported Advocate Tim Hanson to the Solicitor General over what he says is a potential breach of the ethics and codes binding Jersey’s legal profession in sending out a press release about the judicial review application.

The children involved — it is not clear how many there are —cannot be identified because of their age, and no details of their cases can be revealed.

Advocate Hanson (pictured) said that the care of vulnerable children should be a top priority for the States. His firm is acting without charge for the institution of the review application. He said: ‘We are only doing it because we have the best interests of the kids at heart. We have acted on behalf of these children in other proceedings, and we are now bringing an application challenging the decision not to give them the specialist treatment they need.

‘It is deeply worrying that, even in the current climate of concern for the most vulnerable children in our community, the States cannot find appropriate provision for the worst of these cases. We very much hope that the minister will revisit his decision.’

Senator Shenton says that he is ‘profoundly disappointed’ that the subject has been publicly revealed, and says that Advocate Hanson is exploiting the family. He said: ‘What he is seeking to do is to bounce my department into picking up multi-million pound bills so that at-risk children can be placed in specialist facilities and services on the mainland.

‘My department’s budget is there to provide the services contained in the Annual Business Plan — and our budget is currently being used to improve care for patients and clients, to buy important technical life-saving equipment and to pay for highly expensive life-saving and life-enhancing drugs.

‘I am keen to see the court recognise the complexity and difficulties of managing at risk children in Jersey. As a matter of principle, I am opposed to children at risk being compelled to leave their homeland and be brought up within another jurisdiction. Such a policy is flawed on two counts. Firstly, because it must be wrong for children to leave their homeland. Secondly, when such children grow up they can then return to the Island but have to suffer the trauma of re-engaging and reintegrating with their own society.’