Childcare in crisis?
Wednesday 3rd December 2008, 3:00PM GMT.
ISLAND social workers are having to juggle almost twice the number of childcare cases recommended following the death in the UK of Victoria Climbié.
The JEP has learned that Children’s Services are so short-staffed that each officer is dealing with an average of 20 cases – even though Lord Laming, who led an inquiry into failings by Haringey Social Services following the eight-year-old’s murder, concluded that individual caseloads should be capped at 12.
Senior figures in the Health and Social Services Department said that they would need an extra ten staff to meet the target, but stressed that the system was still working well. Health chief executive Mike Pollard (pictured) said: ‘Providing social services in a small community is likely to be more successful because there is a very close working relationship between the many agencies, like the police and Hospital staff, who work together to keep children safe and far from harm. Providing services in a small island like Jersey also means that it is far harder for families to slip through the net.’
However, it is understood that recruitment is becoming harder and harder in the wake of both the Haut de la Garenne inquiry and Senator Stuart Syvret’s past criticisms of the service. It is also now much harder to recruit qualified social workers to the Island because UK pay levels have now caught up with Jersey’s and restrictive housing laws make the Island an unappealing option.
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Do you think the difficulty in recruiting staff from the mainland might have something to do with the way Simon Bellwood was treated for trying to protect our children?
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that’s a bit rich saying that it is harder to attract new staff in the wake of both the Haut de la Garenne inquiry and Senator Stuart Syvret’s past criticisms of the service. I would have thought that Syvret’s highlighting of the practices that took place in greenfields and les chenes ie The grand prix system are now gone forever, so in reality it should be more attractive for would be social workers, and i can assure you that the U.K. pay has not caught up with Jersey’s yet. Yet another opportunity to have a dig at Syvret. You probably wont print this as usual or may heavily edit it.
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Simon Bellwood has offered to meet with Frank Walker on a number of occasions with vital evidence on child abuse in Jersey only to be turned down.
The evidence could relate to other senior civil servants and their activities in relation to that abuse making it imperative that Mr Walker meets with Simon to receive this evidence as it could be comprimised if others have access to the evidence.
Mr Walker is I feel letting the victims down as he has in the past by his stand and he may not want to know what’s in the evidence as it will bring him directly into the case when it comes to court.
If he does not see this evidence he can them claim he knew nothing about it and what the evidence contains.
I will introduce a private member’s bill and questions related to this when next in the house of parliament.
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This is a very small island how come there are still so many people producing children they do not want and do not look after properly – contraception is free.
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Does anyone on this bl….y Island ever stop moaning about everything?If you don’t like it and can’t do anything about your particular issue,why don’t you move away!!Know anywhere better let me know!!
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i think through everything that’s happened recently more cases will be heard now as 2 years ago – less than 30% of complaints made it to court
I personally found my child protection officer very nice and caring and i was able to call her 24/7
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why are we talking about importing labour for these jobs?
whats wrong with training a local for this type work?
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In Ireland between 1999 and 2004 approx we had a string of false allegations of child killing in residential institutions that received huge publicity in the media. Many of them related to times when NO CHILD DIED OF ANY CAUSE! (This hysteria may well have been the inspiration behind the Haut de la Garenne fiasco; where else in the UK or France were similar allegations made?)
The allegations were directed mainly against the Christian Brothers but the fact that those particular claims have been discredited has made no difference. Every teacher, doctor, nurse, social worker etc must take precautions against false allegations of child abuse. One aspect is that a child can never be alone with a social worker. Thus a child who may be experiencing abuse in his/her home (for example) cannot have a private conversation with a social worker because the latter is obliged to defend himself against possible allegations.
It is one of the vilest perversions of human solidarity that can be imagined and it is NOT paedophiles who are responsible.
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