JERSEY doesn’t have enough places for children in care at the moment, a lawyer has said, with eight further places due to be lost in the coming months.
Advocate Darry Robinson, who specialises in child protection cases, called for a therapeutic unit to be created in Jersey to avoid children having to be sent to the UK.
Mr Robinson made his plea after the Royal Court blocked a plan by the Children’s Minister to send vulnerable siblings to the UK, where the minister had suggested a placement in a specialist facility.
In a recently published judgment, Commissioner Matthew Thompson said it was “clear” that the mother loved the children and was trying to get help herself.
He said: “She also provided to us a detailed handwritten letter. This letter was heartfelt and very moving; it was more than just a plea not to send [the children] away but confirmed to us that she wanted the best [for them].”
The court said there was no good reason to send them to the UK.
The judgment also revealed that three children’s homes are due to close “in the coming months” despite a years-long shortage of local residential care spaces.
One of them was due to close in August because it was near the site of the new hospital and deemed “inappropriate”.
This meant Jersey is due to lose eight places, while the secure unit at Greenfields is due to be transformed into a “specialist campus”. Greenfields has been criticised for its “cell-like” bedrooms and the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry Panel said it should be demolished.
Jersey has 60 children in care, the court heard.
Commissioner Thompson told the minister that struggling with resources wasn’t a reason to send children to the UK.
He said: “The Island’s commitment to putting children first requires the Minister and children services to provide placements and ensure that it has adequate resources to do so.
“We accept that this may not be easy, but the fact that something is difficult is not a reason to send children away or back to a home that is not yet safe without something more.”
The Island has been struggling with space in residential care for years. In 2017, a campaign to recruit a carer specifically for a nine-year-old boy yielded no results and he was placed in a home in the UK.
Mr Robinson – who wasn’t involved in the case but has dealt with similar ones – said the Island doesn’t have enough places available, “and the places aren’t good enough for some children”.
He said: “I think there needs to be provision to keep Jersey children in Jersey.
“We need a therapeutic unit over here for children who require therapy in that sort of setting, rather than sending them over to the UK, in my view.”
Plans to transform Greenfields into a therapeutic facility were “a step in the right direction”, he said.
The Children’s Service declined to comment on the specific case but admitted “longstanding challenges with regard to the availability of residential care for children in Jersey”.
In a statement to the JEP, it said decisions on children’s care were “very finely balanced” and added: “It is essential that we find homes for children which meet their needs. Some children have specialist needs which cannot be met through care arrangements in Jersey.
“The Children’s Services reform/improvement plan provides a framework to address these challenges by creating additional capacity in children’s homes over the next five years.”
