25 March 2014
The Minister for Health and Social Services has launched a six week long stakeholder consultation about a draft Regulation of Care Law with providers of health and social care, including States departments, care homes, primary care, dentists and relevant charitable organisations.
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 rest of Britain and will take into account care services that many people may already assume are regulated.
Outcome from 2010 consultation
The outcome from a green paper consultation with stakeholders in 2010 and a States report published in May 2013 concluded that the existing laws, dating from 1978 and 1995, are insufficient to ensure expected standards, as they:
- do not regulate care provided to support people in their own homes, no care provided by Health and Social Services Department
- have outdated definitions of regulated activities
- fail to provide a framework for imposing acceptable standards with regard to the quality of care provided in the full range of health and social care settings
- make insufficient provision for background checks of staff
- do not include requirements for the governance arrangements that care services should adopt to protect patients from harm or abuse
Main provisions of the draft law
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
- 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
Full confidence
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. This should enable the public to have full confidence in the standards of care provided within their health and social care services.
The Minister for Health and Social Services, Anne Pryke said, “This update on the current out of date law is very welcome, to ensure that we can provide the best standards of care for Islanders and ensure that whether they are looked after in their own homes or in a residential or care home, that they are given the best possible care by regulated staff.
"There is a great deal of detailed planning which has gone into this work, and I hope now that stakeholders will use the consultation time to let us know what they think of the new law. I am keen to implement this as soon as possible so these important changes can be made.”
A copy of the consultation report from 2010 and the draft law consultation is available on gov.je.
gov.je