Government of Jersey

Mental health treatment for adults (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey and published on 04 April 2024.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

Request

Please provide the following figures:

How many adults are currently receiving residential mental health treatment in Jersey?

How many are on the waitlist to receive this treatment?

How many adults are currently receiving community mental health treatment in Jersey?

How many are on the waiting list for this treatment?

How many vacancies are there for Adult Mental Health professionals in Jersey?

What are the main barriers to recruitment?

How many deaths over the past fice years were down to suicide or had mental illness listed as part of the cause of death in Jersey?

Response

Health and Community Services (HCS) provides 10 residential care beds at Clairvale. This facility has been at 100% capacity within the last 2 years.

Other (charitable and private) organisations also provide residential care. HCS does not hold data for these external services and, as such, cannot provide total figures for adults receiving residential mental health treatment in Jersey. Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies in this respect.

There are six people currently on the waiting list for Clairvale.

2,685 people are receiving community mental health treatment (across all services and all adult ages).

All new referrals for mental health assessment come through the Crisis and Assessment Team (CAT). HCS aim to see routine referrals within 10 working days and crisis referrals within four hours. In February 2024, HCS saw 93.5% of routine referrals within 10 days and 91.7% of all crisis referrals within four hours.

Following the initial assessment, the service user is passed to the most appropriate service for further assessment, treatment and care. This may result in a wait – for example, HCS’ specialist diagnostic services have the following number of people waiting:

• ADHD 743

• Autism 154

• Gender 24

• Memory Assessment 180

HCS also have people waiting for psychological therapy, though many will have already had their initial assessment. There are currently 233 people waiting across all psychological therapy services.

There are currently 97 vacancies in Adult Mental Health (of 383.5 posts – 25%), although a number of these posts have been offered or are in the process of being recruited to.

Barriers and difficulties in recruiting have been well documented in HCS Advisory Board meetings, Scrutiny Panel meetings, States Assembly (links below). These include – but are not limited to – global shortages of clinical staff / limited availability of specialist clinicians, difficulties recruiting into health environments since the COVID-19 pandemic, cost of living in Jersey, and protracted recruitment processes.

Government of Jersey

Health and Community Services Advisory Board (gov.je)

States Assembly (gov.je)

Quarterly hearings transcripts (gov.je)

Figures for data held on deaths from prior to 2023 are reported annually and are published on www.gov.je. The figures provided include deaths occurring in Jersey, plus deaths that occurred overseas to Jersey residents where the body was repatriated to Jersey.

Jersey Mortality Statistics 2019 (gov.je)

Jersey Mortality Statistics 2020 (gov.je)

Further Mortality Report 2020 (gov.je)

Jersey Mortality Statistics 2021 (gov.je)

Jersey Mortality Report 2022 (gov.je)

As this information is available elsewhere, Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Mortality data is taken from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions documented on the death certificate are coded using the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10). From all of these, a cause of death is determined and codes are attributed for this and any underlying contributing causes, in line with ICD-10 coding standards.

Due to the delays which can sometimes occur with registration of deaths, it is standard for mortality data to be reported in arrears. Data may be affected upon conclusion of any inquests that remain open at the time of reporting. Deaths occurring during the calendar year 2023 will be reported on in September 2024, as per the Public Health Intelligence publication schedule linked below:

Public Health Intelligence publication release schedule (gov.je)

Article 36 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has 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 23 - Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.

Article 36 - Information intended for future publication

(1) Information is qualified exempt information if, at the time when the request for the

information is made, the information is being held by a public authority with a view to its

being published within 12 weeks of the date of the request.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground

must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant –

(a) of the date when the information will be published;

(b) of the manner in which it will be published; and

(3) In this Article, “published” means published –

(a) by a public authority; or

(b) by any other person

Public Interest Test

Article 36 is a qualified exemption. As such a public interest test has been conducted to determine whether, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure:

disclosure of the information would support transparency and promote accountability to the general public.

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information:

mortality data is published annually in line with the Public Health Intelligence publication schedule. Due to the delays which can sometimes occur with registration of deaths, it is standard for mortality data to be reported in arrears. Data may be affected upon conclusion of any inquests that remain open at the time of reporting. It is reasonable for a Scheduled Public Authority to publish reports in an orderly manner, following completion of appropriate internal processes.