Personal advisors for care leavers (FOI)

Request

In January 2020, the Government announced it would allocate a Personal Advisor to all children in care before or shortly after their 14th birthday as part of a care leavers package.

I would be grateful if you could answer the questions:

A

How many children in care are currently over the age of 14?

B

How many of them have access to a Personal Advisor?

C

Since the announcement of the care leavers package, how many Personal Advisors have been hired? Please provide a monthly breakdown.

D

If any member of staff within Government has been redeployed to the service, please provide a breakdown of those as well as which role they were previously in (ie social workers and so on)

E

How and where was the role advertised during the recruitment campaign? Please provide a copy of the recruitment advertisement and a job description.

F

On average, how many children in care would a Personal Advisor work with?

G

On average, how many hours can a child spend with a Personal Advisor? ie are they available for a couple of hours, half a day, to answer the child’s questions and support them in whatever they need?

H

What has been the cost of the Personal Advisors so far? Please provide a breakdown in salary costs, recruitment costs, training costs and others.

I

Is the Government planning on recruitment more Personal Advisors? If so, how many and by when?

Response

A

35 children, aged between 14 and 18 years old, are currently in care.

B

33 are eligible to access a Personal Advisor and 11 of them have one allocated. They all have a lead social worker until the age of 18. The social worker will be their lead professional, working to develop their pathway plan. The remaining children in care will be allocated a Personal Advisor at an appropriate time in the near future as part of their care planning.

C

Five Personal Advisors have been employed. The Department is unable to provide a monthly breakdown as this would likely result in the identification of individuals. Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied to this part of the request.

D

No member of staff was redeployed into the Leaving Care Service from the redeployment list.

E

The role was advertised on the recruitment page of the Government website (www.gov.je). The advert wording and a copy of the job description is below:

Are you a kind and supportive team player with a passion for improving outcomes?

In this role you will work directly with our care leavers, championing their rights and views, ensuring they are able to access the services and support they want to thrive.

This is a dynamic role that puts you at the centre of our care leavers lives: building trusting relationships and in partnership, help them navigate a path to success.

F

On average, Personal Advisors would work actively with 15-20 care leavers up to the age of 25. They work alongside a social worker for children under 18.

G

There is no specific time allocation, the time is based on the needs of the care leaver and dependent on the individual situation or circumstance that they are being supported with.

H

The total cost recorded on payroll relating to the role is £227,815.59 from inception to the end of July 2021. A breakdown of recruitment costs and training is not tracked individually and is therefore not held in a reportable format for the purposes of Freedom of Information.

I

There are no further recruitment plans at this stage.

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 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 2018.

(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 2018; and (b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.