The Children’s Services Improvement Plan

​About the Children’s Services Improvement Plan

The Children’s Services Improvement Plan sets out a vision for strengthening the social care system that supports and protects vulnerable children and young people. 

This programme will deliver reforms to:

• better identify vulnerabilities
• support families earlier
• reduce the need for children to enter care

Where care is needed, we’ll ensure that children live in safe, nurturing homes where they can thrive. 

The core of this plan is the Children and Young People (Jersey) Law 2022​, which reinforces the principle that safeguarding is a shared responsibility across: 

• Government
• Services
• the wider community

Our vision

Our improvement programme sets out to deliver excellent services that place children and families at the centre of everything we do.

The core actions of the plan are to:

• join up services and professionals around the child
• build a resilient and skilled workforce
• strengthen homes and care pathways
• elevate the voice of children and young people

Strategic priorities

The plan focuses on 3 key strategic priorities

1. Supporting families 
2. Loving homes
3. Care and support

Supporting families

We’ll improve coordination and early intervention across services by:

• ensuring a joined-up approach to children’s needs by developing a multi-disciplinary service
• developing an adolescent service
• redesigning the workforce to create a model service delivery
• strengthening the quality of practise through improved system wide oversight ​

Loving homes

We’ll improve sufficiency, quality and suitability of care placements by:

• conducting a needs analysis to inform sustainable residential estate modelling 
• redesigning and strengthening the workforce in fostering and residential
• establishing an estate strategy and capital investment plan
• creating sufficient homes for 16 to 19-year-olds to promote successful independence
  
• updating the settings and registration for additional flexible models of care

Care and support

We’ll strengthen systems of care and oversight for children in care by:

• redesigning corporate parenting board with subgroup structure and wider involvement of partners
• creating a Children in Care Council to ensure greater participation of young people
• improving support to children in care and care leavers