Stuart Syvret

Reading the spate of stories (in the Guardian, the Times, the JEP and Community Care), I was struck by two matters:

1) The statement that this regime was in place, but is no longer in place since last year is all very well, but it raises some important questions: (a) who knew about these degrading practices among the staff (b) where are those staff now who implemented these practice (c) have they been disciplined or brought to account.

I would have thought that the matter cannot be simply brushed off so easily.

If someone committed child abuse 5 years ago, and now says "that was in the past", I am sure the Courts would not take that as a complete mitigation of the past events, and take a very dim view of that kind of argument. If the officials responsible are still in positions of responsibility, then the situation has not been resolved. Responsibility for past actions in institutions cannot just be airbrushed away because officials are no longer acting that way, a point made notably by the film "Skallagrigg".

The argument that they were following orders (if this is brought into use) is also the worst possible one, and certainly has never absolved people from responsibility in other jurisdictions where inhumane practices have been involved. But if they were following orders, that also places a burden of responsibility - and accountability - on those who gave those orders. One hopes that the enquiry will ask and answer these questions, otherwise it is largely a waste of time.

2) The argument that Stuart Syvret's conduct is the sole matter behind the vote to dismiss him from office is fine in theory, but impossible in practice. Clearly, the two matters are so finely interwoven that - as the press certainly sees the matter, and I am sure the general public - a vote to dismiss him will be seen as a piece of political manoeuvring to silence all criticism on this subject. That an enquiry has been called for by the Council of Ministers is no answer. As anyone who has watched "Yes Minister" will know, that is a standard kind of Government response to silence critics, and the resultant conclusions of the Hutton and Butler reports - both independently commissioned but with a very specific Government brief on terms and scope of investigation - do not give much in the way for assurance on that matter either.


Tony Bellows

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http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2007/08/30/105606/editorial-comment-send-for-the-inspectors.html

Our exclusive story this week about child care on the island of Jersey raises a bewildering array of questions about the treatment of children and the role of social workers. Children as young as 11 placed in a secure unit, of the kind run by local authorities on the UK mainland, were allegedly locked up in solitary confinement as a matter of routine. Simon Bellwood, the British social worker who managed the Greenfields secure unit on the island, has been brave enough to blow the whistle on this punitive regime and has paid a heavy price.

Jersey's health and social services minister Stuart Syvret has branded the use of solitary confinement as "torture". At the very least it could surely be considered as "inhumane and degrading" treatment under the terms of European human rights convention.

The Jersey government has rightly commissioned an independent review of children's services. Quite apart from appraising the system against widely accepted human rights principles, it should call for regular external scrutiny. There is nothing akin to the Commission for Social Care Inspection to peer into the murk of institutional error, yet past experience tells us that unregulated, closed institutions inevitably go wrong. Safeguards work when they make it easy to be good and hard to be bad in Jersey the opposite appears to be the case.