THE government had agreed to fund the Jersey Recovery College for another year immediately before the organisation’s sudden closure, it has emerged.
Last month, the charity’s board of directors announced that the JRC had been forced to close “with immediate effect” because of an increased demand on services, growing costs and a reduction in income and donations.
A response to a written question submitted by Deputy Jonathan Renouf has now highlighted that a number of meetings were held between Health officers and the JRC to try to establish how the service could continue.
Health Minister Tom Binet’s response also revealed that the government was made aware of the JRC’s financial problems in January this year.
After the JRC’s financial accounts were shared, four months of government funding was paid in advance to support the charity’s cash flow.
Deputy Binet confirmed that the Health commissioning team also met private funders to give assurance of government support, so that they in turn would offer financial assistance to the charity.
At that point, the JRC contract with the government was due to expire on 30 June 2024. Health agreed to award a further 12-month contract from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, and to work with JRC to redesign the service’s offer to “meet those identified needs subject to the financial viability of the charity”.
“A longer contract could not be offered at that time, as the financial viability concerns were already known,” explained Deputy Binet.
The Health Minister explained that the charity outlined plans to deliver “a significantly lower level of activity” in the second half of 2024 as a “transitional phase”, which was accepted and supported by his department.
Health also offered mental-health staff to support the delivery of some of the charity’s planned groups, he said.
Deputy Binet added that an “implied contract” was entered into in July and August, which saw JRC receive another two months of funding to cover the summer school courses that the charity had already committed to delivering.
He noted that the Health commissioning team spent “a considerable amount of time working with JRC to support them in exploring options, service development and financial assessment”.
The Health Minister also confirmed that there were no plans to redistribute any of the funds allocated to JRC to an alternative charity.
He explained that the department’s mental-health team had been working to develop a new group model that would be introduced from next month to replicate some of the work previously delivered by JRC.
“During the last term, a total of 79.5 hours of courses were provided over four months, an average of four hours per week, so the level of support provided was not extensive,” added Deputy Binet.
