How is the JCPC constituted?
Although modelled on the child protection committees set up in England in 1991 (replaced in 2005 by Local Safeguarding Children Committees), the JCPC differs in that it is not a legal body set up by statute.
The chair of the JCPC reports directly to the Minister for Health and Social Services.
Members of the committee are nominated by their agencies with the understanding that they will work collectively to achieve the aims of the JCPC, and act as a ‘bridge’ between staff in their own agency and their JCPC colleagues. However, they remain accountable to their own agencies.
The formal accountability of staff undertaking work on behalf of the JCPC is to the Chief Officer of Health and Social Services. However, Ministers recognise that the JCPC cannot fulfil its aims unless it is seen to be responsive to all the agencies from which its members are drawn, as well as being at arm's length to the actual services so that the people of Jersey can have confidence in its monitoring role. This role of ‘bridge’ between the different services and to the people who use services and the wider community is recognised by JCPC staff being located separately from Children’s Services.
Our aims and responsibilities
Aims of the JCPC
The aims of the JCPC include:
- raising awareness within Jersey civil society of the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare and work with members of the community to strengthen ways they can contribute to these objectives
- monitoring the arrangements (including recruitment and training policies) made by government, voluntary and private agencies to ensure that the children to whom they provide services are protected from all forms of maltreatment
- developing and regularly reviewing policies and procedures to ensure that the different agencies to whom the protection of Jersey children is entrusted work together effectively, and in a spirit of partnership with each other and with the parents and children who may need protection services
- having a role in monitoring the adequacy of the services provided by the specialist child protection organisations, and their responsiveness to the needs of vulnerable children and their families
- ensuring that arrangements are in place to listen to the voices of children, parents, those working with them and members of the public who have concerns about child maltreatment, and taking on board their views about how services can be improved
- reviewing all cases where child maltreatment or neglect has contributed to the death or serious injury to a child, or where a child has been subjected to particularly serious sexual abuse or to organised abuse, in order to ensure that lessons are learned and reported to the States and to the public
Responsibilities of the JCPC
Responsibility to establish guidelines and procedures:
- to develop and agree local policies and procedures for inter-agency work to protect children
- to publish these guidelines and seek to ensure that they are implemented
- to ensure that the specific agency guidelines are complementary and that all reflect a firm commitment to an inter-agency approach to child protection, and to working in partnership with families and other carers
- to encourage and help develop effective working relationships between different services and professional groups, based on trust and mutual understanding
- to monitor and evaluate how well local services work together to protect children, for example through case audits
- to ensure that there is a level of agreement and understanding across agencies about operational definitions and thresholds for intervention
- to seek to improve local ways of working in the light of knowledge gained through national and local research, and to make sure that any lessons learned are shared, understood and acted upon
- to undertake case reviews where a child has died or, in certain circumstances, has been seriously harmed and abuse or neglect are confirmed or suspected. To make sure that any lessons learned from the case are understood and acted upon, to communicate clearly to individual services and professional groups their shared responsibility for protecting children and to explain how each can contribute
- to raise awareness within the wider community of the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare and to explain how the wider community can contribute to these objectives
Responsibility to facilitate support for users and establish complaints procedure:
- to work with local user groups or voluntary organisations so that families can be fully aware of procedures and receive informed support
- to actively seek feedback from users both adult and children so that their opinions can be taken into account when evaluating and further developing procedurest
- to establish a complaints procedure and to provide it in easily comprehensible form to users
Responsibility to facilitate training:
- to help improve the quality of child protection work and of inter-agency working through specifying needs for inter-agency training and development and ensuring that training is delivered
Terms of reference
Our terms of reference are agreed by the Council of Ministers and regularly reviewed by the Ministers and chief officers in the 3 departments principally responsible for children’s services (Education Sport and Culture; Health and Social Services, and Home Affairs).
Download JCPC Terms of Reference (size 70kb)
Sub-committees: terms of reference
Download JCPC performance procedures and audit sub-committee terms of reference (size 74kb)
Download JCPC serious cases sub-committee terms of reference (size 67kb)
Download JCPC training sub-committee terms of reference (size 32kb)
Download JCPC planning and communications terms of reference (size 28kb)
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