IT may have been four years since she led the Island’s vaccination campaign during the pandemic, but for many Islanders Becky Sherrington will always be the “Covid lady”.
Ms Sherrington doesn’t object. She was responsible for ensuring that Jersey’s vaccination programme succeeded during the pandemic, and it did. Indeed, the Island’s response to the pandemic was the quickest in the UK and among the most successful in Europe.
And through it all, it was Ms Sherrington who was the public face of vaccination in the Island.
“I’d taken a conscious decision to be open and transparent,” she tells the JEP, “because I knew people would trust me and what was happening [if I did].”
But it came with a lot of risk, she says, and it had consequences for her family life.
“My children would go to school and the teachers would ask them about their mum. I’d walk down the street and people would be like: ‘Oh, you’re the Covid lady’, and ask me questions in front of my children.”
It was also a great deal of work, with Ms Sherrington recalling that her team worked seven days a week, through Christmas and New Year. “I came out of it [and] the risk was worth it, because now I can say: ‘OK, I helped people.’ And that is the only reason I did it,” she said.
“If I’d got it wrong,” she admitted, “I’d probably have had to leave the Island”
When it was over, Ms Sherrington said, she took a holiday: but within a week she’d applied for a new role.
“After that level of intensity, it became business as usual, and I thought: ‘I’m going to get bored of this.’ I wasn’t bored, but I knew I would get bored. I took a week away at the end of Covid, trying to relax, and then this job came up and I thought: I’ll apply,” she said.
“This job” was Ms Sherrington’s current position as Jersey’s care commissioner, heading the commission that is charged with regulating and inspecting care homes and home care services – including registered individual carers – and day care services for adults in Jersey.
The Island was late to the party when it comes to regulating the care sector, only passing the Regulation of Care (Jersey) Law in 2014, which created a framework for regulating care services across the Island.
The law gained urgency after 2017 when the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry revealed huge failings in care services for children in the Island, and demonstrated the need for a care regulator. The commission began regulating social care services, including care homes and home-care providers, before expanding to children’s services following the inquiry.
There are now ten areas of social care that the commission regulates, with plans to expand its remit to hospitals, ambulance and mental-health services in the coming years, if ministers agree. For each of the existing ten areas, the commission has had to draw up new guidelines.
“We’ve had to write ten sets of standards for those different areas that people can understand, and then write inspection methodology that is fit [for each of them],” she said.
Prior to the commission’s work, standards were inconsistent in the Island, meaning that those in the industry and those using it were not clear about expectations, from everything from cleanliness to the number of staff needed to care for patients.
“Before [they] had nothing to benchmark themselves against. Now the sector can say: ‘Right, I am achieving those standards’. And actually, most if them are going above and beyond,” she said.
When the care sector does make headlines in the Island it tends to be when it is failing, or when controversial issues arise such as the practice of transferring children to the UK in order to get care they cannot get in Jersey. But Ms Sherrington says that there is a misconception that this practice is a bad thing when it is occasionally very necessary.
“Some children do need [to be sent overseas]. If you’ve got a heart condition [the] care you need [might] be outside the expertise of the Island. There are some children, in some cases, who require specialist support and advice and care,” she said.
“We looked at that […] and we actually found that those children were doing really well.”
As well as carrots, the Care Commission has its sticks, and if it was minded could cancel the registration of managers, cancel providers or even refer care providers or individuals to the Attorney General for consideration of a fine of up to £50,000 per breach.
“I don’t get [my] stick out very often at all, but if I do, it’s because that means that something’s gone wrong – and things do go wrong,” she said. “I need to have a stick, because I’m here to defend vulnerable people.”
Unlike some other regulators in the Island, the Care Commission has prioritised transparency: with meetings, minutes, reports and judgments all publicly available. This not only allows the public to be aware of exactly what the regulator is doing and when, but applies pressure on the providers that are subject to inspection to fix things quickly.
“Transparency is really important, especially on a small island, because people don’t trust very often,” she said.
Regulation can be tough, Ms Sherrington conceded. For a provider to be inspected, to have a regulator going through their books and looking into every corner of their facility, can be a stressful experience.
Key to maintaining the relationship between regulator and regulated is a supportive relationship, she said, and the recognition on the part of the commission that the service that care providers in the Island offer is both difficult and essential.
Especially in the care realm, where there have undoubtedly been failures, the shadows of which loom large over the Island just over 15 years since Haut de la Garenne. Ms Sherrington admits to the JEP that this is going to sound implausible, but the desk in her office only has one thing on it: a copy of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry.
“That’s the only document I’ve got. I’ve got a clean desk other than that. It is impactful because that’s what we’re here to do, to make it better for those children who haven’t got a voice,” she said.
