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21-10-20
Response to Children, education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel Gov Plan Review
CAMS Service Redesign:- Whilst we absolutely support the needs of a well designed service supporting the needs of the Islands Children and young adults mental health and wellbeing, we are concerned at the ability to recruit and retain suitably qualified staff. The major issue being the high housing and living cost for staff. It is vital in this area to have a stable workforce so that Children and parents can build a relationship which is not possible if there is high staff turnover or positions are covered by UK temps and locums who are constantly changing . Some staff in this area may already have been downgraded as part of the AHP review, so morale in this area is likely to be low. In addition we would hope to see considerable investment in developing the required skills in local residents and, in particular, the development of a education process that ensures a career pathway from leaving school to becoming a qualified worker.
Covid-19 test and Trace - Again we are fully supportive of the need for a first class track and trace system to protect the islands population. We would like to understand how the track and trace team has been constructed, eg secondments, fixed term contracts etc. the use of secondments could lead to shortages in other sections, which may be putting excessive stress in these areas, and impacting on staff's mental health and wellbeing , or meaning other services are not being delivered, eg environmental health. If positions have been filled using fixed term contracts , there is always the issue of staff leaving to take up permanent opportunities, and thus potentially leading to high staff turnover which could impact on the service provided. With respect to seconded staff we would want to ensure that they are able to return to their previous post once the track and trace is no longer required, with the amount of reorganisation still taking place we fear some staff's roles may disappear whilst they are on secondment, this is certainly going to be stressful, and impact on their wellbeing.
JHA - One has to question the cost of setting up the new tier 1&2 management levels within JHA. Both the Tier 2 posts are new and the work was previously undertaken by the service heads, there are no savings and no evaluation of the added value of these posts? The establishment of the Tier 2 posts basically demoted service heads who are all professionals and it would be interesting to consider how that would impact on the management of risk if something goes wrong eg if there was a fatality at a fire who would be answering the difficult decisions, T1,T2 or the fire chief
SPPP Public services ombudsman - Clearly the requirement for an ombudsman has been identified as being required, whilst delaying setting up this service will save money, one has to question what will happen in the meantime to complaints, and how will they be resolved. The public service is undergoing unprecedented levels of change, so there clearly needs to be a robust mechanism to resolve issues and problems independently.
JHA SoJP - The use of a redundancy factor can create significant problems, especially in specialist positions or small sections or departments. This can lead to these sections being under resourced, impacting on the service provided or increasing levels of stress or increased workload.
In many instances staff need to be recruited in advance of someone leaving to provide a suitable handover and training period. The proposal significantly underestimates the impact on wellbeing of the GOJ workforce.
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