ONE of the most important – as well as one of the longest awaited – States documents of recent years will soon be ready for publication after several years of work.

The policy report, entitled New Directions, will propose a wide-ranging set of plans for restructuring the Island’s health and care services to meet the changing demands of Jersey’s community in the 21st century. Few can be in any doubt that one of the major challenges involved will be how to cope with an ageing population and sustain a society whose members have the opportunity to enjoy later lives of a length and quality unimaginable to previous generations.

For that reason, the new Scrutiny report on care services for the elderly provides food for thought which is both worrying and critical to the successful implementation of the wider plan. In preparing it, the Health, Social Security and Housing Scrutiny panel came across disturbing evidence of old people being placed at potential risk by unsatisfactory standards of care.

It is a finding which will come as an unwelcome surprise to Islanders more used to encountering praise for the quality of Jersey’s health services, especially by comparison with those in other jurisdictions. That concern will be heightened by the additional information that potential problems were found not only in private care homes but also public ones, and that families reported their fears that loved ones would suffer if they pursued complaints.

Very clearly, that is a situation which cannot be allowed to continue. In highlighting it, the outgoing panel – demonstrating once again the growing effectiveness and significance of the Scrutiny system – have provided valuable reinforcement for the New Directions process. They have also offered a timely reminder that, good as they may be when taken overall, there is no room for either complacency or lack of vigilance in the provision of health and care services which, by their nature, involve vulnerable people.

And at a practical level, the Scrutiny report has highlighted administrative shortcomings, such as the system’s current inability to allow police checks on care staff, which can be remedied swiftly and easily.
At the heart of the New Directions plan is the need to promote better health for longer, more independent old ages – a fine and sensible vision but one which, as the post-war baby bulge passes into its later stages, must be underpinned by this kind of careful attention to the simple basics.