How many Children's Commissioners does the world need ?

It surprised me that Jersey’s new Children’s Commissioner has made 20 trips outside the Island since her appointment in January 2018 “learning on the job and staying connected.”

I should have hoped that she might bring sufficient knowledge with her.

 

After all, there is a very full Independent Jersey Care Inquiry Report already published to guide her and she is “an ex police officer, teacher and director of children’s services from the UK” where more than enough  has been researched and written about child welfare and safeguarding in the past 50 years to satisfy any thirst for theoretical knowledge.

 

And it’s not as though she has to do the job in Jersey on her own because there is a Children’s Minister, a Director General for child welfare and Charlie Parker to support her besides which there is a virtual army of trained social workers, psychiatrists, medics, teachers and carers etc working out of several interlocking government departments with specific duties towards children besides a myriad of official groups and committees designed to catch any who fall through the wellbeing net.

 

Not to mention that all 49 elected States Members are supposed to have an individual responsibility for children in Jersey and they have been invited to sign up to the Chief Minister’s “Pledge to Jersey’s Children and Young People”…and of course there is a multitude too of voluntary and semi-voluntary supportive net-working organizations who are in position to observe - and if necessary influence - the healthy development of children from the moment they are born.

 

Besides which the welfare of children is now the “number one priority” in the Jersey Strategic Plan and the Island has even signed up at long last to the highest standards laid down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which already have attracted a lifetime of wise application by reason of their acceptance by most countries across the world.

 

So what could possible go wrong now?

 

Sadly of course, the recent international record demonstrates that the welfare of children is in a very serious state of neglect across the world.

 

Even within the UK the mammoth Child Abuse Inquiry for England and Wales has only just managed to publish its first interim report.

If that Inquiry does ever complete its task this will be several years in the future.

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry established in 2016 is also rumbling on - whilst the N. Ireland Inquiry looking at the years 1922-1995 has now reported but it is not clear what might happen next.

 

And the particular role of the Church in N. Ireland is also a factor in other territories which many are reluctant to deal with.

 

In Jersey, the Independent Care Inquiry has reported (as referred to above) but already there is a plan to extend the terms of reference of the “compensation” scheme to include about 75 more people whose ill-treatment as children in the care of official agencies has been previously omitted.

Significantly, the initiative for this latest action arises from the work of a UK lawyer pressing for justice within the Island and not from Jersey lawyers or agencies of the Jersey government.

 

Now, so far as Jersey is concerned, shall that finally be the end of the matter?

 

Clearly not, after all, seemingly every week new cases are reported of the abuse of children in Jersey, with some cases appearing in the Courts whilst the AG has declared that he is not satisfied with the low rate of conviction of abusers and he has promoted law revisions.

 

Unfortunately, because the general public is largely excluded from official hearings in Jersey where children are concerned and public reporting is minimal, very little factual knowledge is made available.

Ignorance prevails along with the secrecy.

 

However, it is significant that the abuse of children takes place especially where conditions of poverty, limited education, social deprivation and neglect prevail.

From Pitcairn and many other Pacific Islands, the Falklands, St Helena, throughout the Caribbean, off shore Australia, the problem of child abuse is common-place and in some instances excused as “part of the culture.”

 

In the Isle of Man, the Knottsfield Children’s Home has been exposed as a place of abuse over several decades and is an interesting example to cite in the context of Jersey where UK style professional standards have supposedly been followed over many years.

 

Inevitably, those same standards have proved wholly ineffective in so many places in the UK but the failures of care do not by-pass cities or areas of industrial activity any more than finance centres….

 

….Except that Guernsey does not seem to have produced a comparable institutional child-abuse problem.

 

Why should this be?

 

Has Guernsey’s child-abuse scandal yet to be revealed or should the Children’s Commissioner and her multi-layered team be better employed seeking guidance in the other Bailiwick rather than Scandinavia or Scotland?

 

Has the much talked about CIs mutual co-operation more to offer then we realize?

 

 

 

Romanian music and dance in Jersey - 2 December 2018

Ramona Ciceoan

Unknown Sax player and group with dancing

Dragos and Dana Patrascu - dance

Public solidarity with the strikers - But why?

Civil Servants "strike" Liberation Square, St Helier, Jersey  7 December 2018


There is no doubt that many States’ civil servants and public employees have been treated very badly.

That they have been left behind and neglected so far as wages and conditions of employment are concerned is evident.

On that basis they deserve general public support and they have been forced into a strike by a particularly uncaring management otherwise known as “our government.”

To rub salt into their wounds, the recently appointed CEO Charlie Parker has proudly announced that’s “It’s my way or the highway” and proposes to reduce the workforce by many hundreds as the continuation of a policy that has been in place for some years already.

 

BUT not all civil servants are angels.

Bullying and harassment has been a feature within many States departments for years and Charlie’s micromanaging “do as I say” ultimatum might seem to be ideally suited to that.

As I write this, Deputy Mike Higgins is speaking on the radio about the many senior managers in the civil service who have been devious, unduly authoritative, even lying in court and how some have been “defaming the public.” He claims to speak on the basis of personal knowledge

 

Only this week the Jersey Complaints Board has published its findings re Mr. B. Huda and the “unjust, oppressive or improperly discriminatory” treatment that he received at the hands of Health and Social Services staff.

 

His case is not unique.

 

Mr Barrette’s timber windows saga with “bullying Planning Officers” was deemed to be “oppressive and improperly discriminatory” too by a Complaints Board and he has received no compensation.

 

The Royal Court has also this week decided the amount of damages to be paid re “Family X” – one of the largest personal injury claims in British legal history - where the children were subjected to a catalogue of abuse in their home “years after it should have been obvious that they needed to be removed.”

 

Yet, this case needs to be considered in the context of the “Jersey Independent Care Inquiry” which reported 18 months ago on decades of abuse of hundreds children in care and the criminal, negligent, inadequate or otherwise defective behaviour of far too many adults employed, supposedly, in positions of trust to safeguard them.

 

When civil servants are being abusive or bullying in the workplace to each other that is bad enough and it has been researched and reported upon in the “HR Lounge Report” published (in secret initially) this year. This Report says that employees have been left “feeling like lepers about making allegations or complaints” and how “there is a culture of fear” and also of too much “gossiping.”

 

But what of the treatment of the general public who have to deal with these civil servants?

If bullying is so commonplace in schools, for example, how might bullied children or their parents expect to be treated if they complain?

Or, how might claimants at the Social Security department be enabled to ensure that they are treated fairly and with consistency and shall staff ever “blow the whistle” on their own colleagues whose behaviour towards the general public is not appropriate?

 

If civil servants are not prepared to blow the whistle to protect each other – what chance that they might take any action in support of a member of the public?

 

The establishment of a “whistle-blower hotline” has been proposed for the use of bullied or abused staff in their workplaces, but it does not seem to be intended to protect the public too or even to be accessible to them.

 

Of course, some staff are abused by the public but the proliferation of “our staff are entitled to respect” notices are themselves often intimidating and hardly likely to encourage a friendly dialogue when differences of opinion or lack of understanding feature.

 

I could list many instances of failings in the services provided by civil servants and the antagonisms that arise with the public. Some have reached the “official complaints” stage as already referred to and have been found to be valid.

Some complaints are not valid.

 

Civil servants often claim to provide an excellent service in difficult circumstances which may  be true – but it s not always so.

There is reluctance in the service to be supportive of the public. When things go wrong the public employees invariably defend “the system” and their colleagues.

 

This current “strike” by civil servants is seen as justified by many members of the general public.

But that support needs to be reciprocal.

Civil servants and other public employees must be encouraged to promote the rights and best interests of the public as well as their own.

 

Oppressive management or government is a common enemy and needs to be recognized for what it is.