Health and Community Services complaints (FOI)

Request

A

How many complaints have been made against the Health and Social Services Department each year since 2018?

B

Please break down whether the complaints have been made by people working for the department or from people externally.

C

Please break down the complaints into categories, for example waiting times, treatment and bullying.

D

How many calls and reports have been made to the Government of Jersey whistleblowing hotline (0800 374 199) since 2018? Can you break the numbers down per year. 

E

Please  break down the answer to question D into Government departments and categories for reason. For example, bullying, patient safety concern.

Response

A to C

Please see the attached table for the number of complaints recorded in the Health and Community Services (HCS) Feedback Management System, including the category breakdown and annual totals.

Complaints recorded in HCS by category 2018 - 2023.pdf

The HCS Feedback Management System is used exclusively to report feedback from patients, which would include instances where HCS staff have themselves been patients and wish to provide feedback on the services they have encountered. 

The employment status of the person providing feedback would not necessarily be detailed in their feedback submission and is irrelevant. As such, it is not possible to provide further information on whether complaints have originated from HCS staff members.

This system is not used for raising internal concerns or complaints as an employee. Separate processes are available to Government of Jersey employees to raise concerns or complaints with the organisation:

People Services policies: Government of Jersey (gov.je)

D

The table below details the number of calls made to the Whistleblowing hotline since 1 January 2018.

E

The below table shows the breakdown by category for all calls made since 17 January 2021 when the current Navex-backed system came into effect. Calls made prior to this date were managed through a legacy system and manual analysis would be required to pull the requested information.

It is not possible to provide a breakdown of the data based on the department involved, as this information is not readily retrievable using the tools available and would require a manual review of each individual case to identify the affected department. It is estimated that to undertake this manual analysis would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.  

Where numbers are small, disclosure control has been applied to avoid the identification of individuals and numbers fewer than five are represented as ‘<5’. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Articles 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. 

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.