FREQUENT changes in social workers and managers are “negatively impacting” children in care, according to an Island watchdog’s report.
The Jersey Care Commission highlighted issues in recruitment and retention in the children’s social care and fostering services.
The commission’s review revealed that while the service had made progress since previous assessments and was generally well managed, “too many changes of workers and managers” were creating instability in the workforce and affecting the quality of support provided to children and foster families.
The report reads: “A high staff turnover within the adoption and fostering service has created instability.”
It continued: “The reliance on a high proportion of agency staff, who can leave at short notice, has placed the service at risk of unfinished assessments and inconsistent support for both prospective and existing foster carers and adopters.”
The report added that cultural issues were continuing to affect the service and called for increased structural and organisational support: “The government of Jersey is still struggling to respond to some of the long-standing cultural challenges that have impacted children’s social care for years.
“There remains a need to increase structural and organisational support to the directorate, particularly support in managing internal and external communications, human resources, workforce management, and financial skills and capacity.”
To address these issues, social-care services have launched a recruitment campaign to attract permanent supervising social workers.
The inspection report came just weeks after Children’s Minister Richard Vibert acknowledged these recruitment problems in a letter to Scrutiny.
He said: “We continue experiencing challenges with recruitment, particularly social-worker roles and roles within residential services.”
The minister explained that the nature of social work made recruitment difficult in Jersey, and that this was compounded by a competitive job market in the UK and social workers leaving the field generally.
