Some children in need of help are only coming to the attention of Jersey’s children’s services through the criminal justice system, the Children’s Minister has admitted.
Richard Vibert told the Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel that opportunities to intervene had been missed years earlier – and that a fall in the number of children in care had wrongly been viewed as a sign of success.
The legacy of those missed interventions is expected to push the number of cared-for children to a peak in 2028.
“The sad fact is that one or two of them are introduced to us through the criminal justice system, which is, in effect, far too late,” he said.
“If you go back through the history, intervention should have taken place some years before. And that is a very sad thing to admit.”
Speaking to the panel on Wednesday, Mr Vibert said there was “a cohort of children we’re aware of, where that intervention didn’t take place and we come in late”.
His comments came as the department undergoes an overhaul through its improvement plan, ‘Building a Brighter Future: Our vision for Children’s Services Improvement’.
Mr Vibert said progress was being made in recruiting social workers and intervening earlier. However, he had warned the panel in a letter that demand for children’s social care and residential provision would grow over the next few years.
He acknowledged that lower numbers had previously masked unmet need.
“Dare I say that if we wound back probably sort of five years ago when I was first an assistant minister, falling numbers were seen as a very positive thing,” he said.
“That was, I think, a misguided view. In fact, what was actually happening was we weren’t capturing those children that were in need at the time.”
Children’s Services director Donna Marriott said the service would become “more proactive”.
Before taking up her role in Jersey, she had worked as an external inspector of the island’s services. Recalling that period, she told the panel that “practice wasn’t proactive enough”.
Ideally, social workers would help families reduce risk and harm at an earlier stage, she said.
“The bit about adolescent risk, the bit about court work hasn’t been strong enough,” said Ms Marriott.
“A lot of our children, when we first started the plan, were coming in as late adolescents, really late adolescents – 15.
“That is a trajectory that would be unusual, because when you come in so late, it’s going to be really hard to change the trajectories for those young people.”
Ms Marriott said forecasting showed numbers were currently “quite low” and children were not entering care early enough – a problem compounded by a shortage of foster homes.
Both she and Mr Vibert said the number of cared-for children was expected to peak in 2028 as those whose needs had previously been missed came through the system.
