22 May 2014
The Minister for Health and Social Services has lodged with the States the draft Regulation of Care (Jersey) Law 201-.
The draft law will, over the next few years, ensure regulation of all health and social care in Jersey. This will bring Jersey into line with the United Kingdom and will for the first time take account of care services that many people may already assume are regulated.
Consultation respondents welcome proposed changes
The draft law was lodged following a stakeholder consultation held in March/April this year. The outcome of this consultation, also published this week, was generally supportive of the framework and respondents welcoming the proposed changes.
The passage of the draft law would be just the first step in the development of a new regulatory framework for health and social care. It will allow the creation of a comprehensive regulatory regime over the next few years and should enable the public to have full confidence in the standards of care provided within their health and social care services.
The main provisions of the draft law include:
- transferring responsibility for regulating health and social care from the Minister for Health and Social Services to an independent commission
- setting out how the commission will be appointed
- requiring providers of care services to be registered by the commission, describing the registration process and enabling the commission to apply appropriate conditions to registration to maintain standards
- enabling regulations and standards to be written about the quality of care services
- describing the commission’s powers to inspect services
- explaining enforcement procedures and appeals processes
Significant development towards full regulation
The Minister for Health and Social Services, Deputy Anne Pryke, said “This is a very significant development towards providing full regulation of all aspects of health and social care in Jersey.
“A great deal of hard work has been taking place behind the scenes in this area, and I’m delighted that we can now move to the next phase and present the draft Law to the States Assembly.”
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