A ROLE set up to address reports of a bullying culture in the Health Department could be extended into Education, a Scrutiny panel has heard.
During a hearing focused on government efforts to address employee grievances and cases of whistleblowing, ministers and senior civil servants said that the success of the “freedom to speak up guardian” adopted in health since the start of 2023 could lead to similar roles being established elsewhere.
Deputy Catherine Curtis, a participant in the hearing convened by the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel, asked if the recent dispute involving educational psychologists had affected the government’s policy relating to those who raised concerns.
The Association of Educational Psychologists said in late 2024 that it was no longer recommending Jersey as an “appropriate or safe place” to its members and refused to carry adverts for local positions while “in dispute” with the government.
At the time, the association highlighted the failure to address concerns raised by educational psychologists – who are employed to support children with special educational needs.
Deputy Curtis said that after the dispute had been resolved, one union leader criticised the Education Department’s handling of the matter and said “she’d not seen this level of incompetence in her 30-year career”.
Assistant Chief Minister Malcolm Ferey said the freedom to speak up guardian had been set up in the Health Department to hear concerns related to patient safety after concerns raised in a critical report by Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor.
“That process is really working well, and has been approved from the back of that [Mascie-Taylor] report,” he said.
“It is possible that type of model could [also] work in an educational setting, where, when people had concerns about pupils, they could raise those concerns to a single point of contact who could then take those concerns forward – there are so many synergies with Health and Education that it’s a distinct possibility.”
Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham said that “significant progress had been made in strengthening whistleblowing and grievance policies”.
“Updates are focused on working to improve clarity and ensuring independence and enhancing protections for employees raising concerns,” he said.
“Changes have included increasing the pool of designated officers from two to four, increasing the pool of trained investigators from 10 to 20, and reviewing lessons learned, with a significant increase in resources.”
Panel member Deputy Alex Curtis said eight updated versions of the grievance policy for public employees had been produced in the past four years and asked about the reasons for this level of change.
Chief people officer Lesley Darwin said that feedback from trade unions had been one of the most significant factors in the regular updates to the policy, and admitted that there was a need for the procedures that were in place to be better communicated around the workforce.
