Request
Please supply the following in respect of the Social Security Department:
A
The number of times the Department's internal safeguarding process was activated during the following years:
B
A breakdown by category of the reasons which led to the Department's internal safeguarding process being activated in each individual case for the following years:
C
A breakdown of how many cases that activated the Department's internal safeguarding process resulted in other agencies being contacted, with the names of those other agencies contacted, for the following years:
If the information cannot be provided because the data is stored in different databases and the claims would need to be counted manually and the cost of doing so would exceed 12.5 hours, please just provide the annual statistics for 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 which would have already been collated by the Department's own Safeguarding Team and would therefore not require the requested statistics to be produced all over again (because they already exist).
Response
Following the lead of the Safeguarding Partnership Board, the Social Security Department introduced its internal safeguarding process and recording in June 2014 and therefore no records are held for 2013
For years 2014 and 2015
Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied as this has been published within a recent Freedom of Information request. For ease of reference please find a link to this request below:
Social Security Department safeguarding process (FOI)
If you require context around our safeguarding process within Social Security this can be found within the above linked request.
2016 and 2017 (up to 31 October)
A and B
| | 2016 | 2017 (up to 31st Oct) |
| Adult at risk | 6 | 6 |
| Child abuse | 8 | 7 |
| Domestic abuse | 7 | * |
| Emotional abuse | * | 6 |
| Financial abuse | * | * |
| Mental health | 12 | 15 |
| Physical abuse | * | * |
| Sexual abuse | * | * |
| Self-neglect | * | * |
| Well being | 76 | 51 |
| Income Support Breach 3 sanction (automatically reviewed process)** | 52 | 29 |
* Five or less therefore Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 is applied.
** An Income Support Breach 3 sanction is given to Income Support claimants if they have not fulfilled their job seeking requirements with Back to Work. This means their Income Support is stopped for at least six weeks. They are given three previous warnings.
Before issuing this sanction, the Department’s Safeguarding Panel automatically screens everyone affected to ensure that there are no safeguarding concerns.
Categories above differ from those recorded in 2014 and 2015 – this is due to figures being recorded in line with the Safeguarding Partnership Boards definitions and best practice from 2016 onwards.
C
Quantity of cases referred to a specialist agency
- 2017: 59 (up to 31st Oct)
These specialist agencies include:
- A&E (Accident and Emergency)
- IDVA (Independent Domestic Violence Advisor)
- JMAPPA (Jersey Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangement)
- MARAC (Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference)
- MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub)
- PPU (Public Protection Unit)
Exemption(s) applied
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 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.
