Social workers (FOI)

Request

A

How many social workers are registered in Jersey?

B

What is the ratio of foreign / local social workers?

C

How many complaints have been filed by social workers against local authorities / persons in safeguarding parties?

D

How many complaints have been filed against social workers during 2015 to 2020?

E

What is the number of cases undertaken by social workers between 2015 to 2020?

F

Is data held on the number of vulnerable adults and children in being granted a social worker between 2015 to 2020?

Response

A

There are 195 Social Workers registered for practice with the Jersey Care Commission.

A register of registered Health professionals is available to the public via the following link, albeit this does give a total count of a profession:

This number may include individuals registered with the Jersey Care Commission but not currently employed as social workers or who are employed in the private sector.

B

The department has been unable to provide the information requested in the form requested as we do not classify workers based on the categorisation in the question. The breakdown below is based on individual’s residential status as at 8 July 2021.

Residential and employment statuses and what they mean (gov.je)

C

From the interpretation of the question, we do not believe this information is held centrally within our systems.

Any breakdowns of complaints would require extraction and manipulation of data and would exceed the 12.5 hour limit provided by Regulation under the Freedom of Information (2011) Law. Article 16 has therefore been applied.

D 

Between 2015 and 2020 inclusive, 104 cases have been filed against social workers across three departments: Health and Community Services, Children, Young People, Education and Skills and People and Corporate Services.

Please note that People and Corporate Services was established in 2017 and therefore, any complaint data prior to this was not recorded.

E

For Children, Young People, Education and Skills, between January 2018 and December 2020 (three years) social workers have worked with 3,009 children.

Prior to this, the data was held in a different format which would require substantial time to retrieve in order to answer this question accurately. This would far exceed the time allowed under the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 therefore Article 16 has been applied.

For Health and Community Services see response F below.

F

Children, Young People, Education and Skills

Yes, the data is held for children only.

Health and Community Services

The information held on vulnerable adults and children is linked to a “Case Coordinator” for the service user (vulnerable child or adult) and not to the particular service or employee ie social worker, nurse or therapist.

A service user may be being supported by a nurse, therapist and or Social Worker. We do not hold a breakdown specific to individual professions to provide detail on the number of Social Worker cases specifically.

Article applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.