MORE than three quarters of the Children’s Department budget is spent on staff, it has emerged – while turnover figures are not fully known, the minister has said.
Speaking during a Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel hearing this week, Children’s Minister Richard Vibert said that “one of the biggest risks” facing his role was the struggle to recruit staff, particularly for residential positions.
Panel member, St Lawrence Constable Tina Palmer asked about the 78% figure of the budget which is spent on staffing costs.
Mr Vibert told her that his department is “very labour-intensive” and said that some of the recruitment issues had stemmed from the Island having to compete with the UK for staff.
He said: “I do fear that what had actually happened in Jersey is that Jersey, because of bad publicity and turnover of staff, that people were actually put off coming here. But we’ve overcome that now.
“But I think that was a genuine factor in some of the recruitment problems for social workers.”
A “home-grown” solution would be the answer to the department’s recruitment issues, he said, stating that a recruitment drive during the summer had been targeting local trainees as well as qualified staff to work in residential care. Director of Children’s Services Donna Marriott told the JEP at the time that the department had been “overwhelmed with interest”.
When scrutineer Mrs Palmer asked Mr Vibert what the current staff turnover was, he said: “Now this is where we have a problem, because we don’t have a system.
“Unfortunately, some of the data is combined with other data, but we are working on being able to calculate the turnover.”
Mr Vibert has held roles within CYPES since 2022, when he was Assistant Children’s and Education Minister. He became Children’s Minister in 2024 following and change of government and was reappointed to that role following June’s election.
He said: “Although we’ve made some great inroads, particularly with social workers – where we’ve moved from having only about 30% of them as full-time employees to 70%… overall recruitment is a significant factor that could limit us.”
A plan to build a therapeutic home in Jersey was dropped after the department “recognised that we would not attract the staff to run it”, he said – meaning that more children have to go to off-Island centres to receive specialist support.
Mr Vibert told the panel that restructuring the residential service was “our biggest challenge at the moment”, though it was “difficult to go into details” of why they could not implement the restructure, with Ms Marriott adding that “we’re asking people to do things differently”.
The minister went on to say that the department had made strides on hiring social workers that recruiting them “isn’t really a problem now” compared to previous years.
