Children treated for weight related issues (FOI)

​Request

Could you list the number of children being treated for weight-linked issues, and their ages and gender over the past 10 years.

Response

Health and Social Services (HSSD) is unable to provide the number of children being treated for weight-linked issues. To do this would require a manual access of each record, and as such, Article 16 (Cost excessive) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the Law) has been applied.

However, HSSD can provide figures as to the number of assessments and appointments that were carried out through the out-patient service, that relate directly to diabetes, carbohydrate counting, nutrition support, weight management, feeding and dietetic assessment.

The tables below details these appointments by year, and by gender.

Assessments and appointments by year and gender

Please note that follow-up, routine, soon and urgent relate to the type of appointment as arranged, and that the data is available only since the use of the current information system in 2011. Therefore the data required pre-2011 is determined to be information that is not held, and Article 3 of the Law has been applied.

Please also note that some of the cells are represented as fewer than five (<5). This is due to the small numbers present in the table above and is to protect the privacy of individuals. Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Law has therefore been applied.

Articles applied:

Article 3 Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

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.

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 2005.

(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 2005; and

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