Currently if children who suffer in this way have to leave the Island to receive care as the only option locally would be for them to go to the adult mental-health facility at Orchard House.
At a recent meeting of the Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel, group director for Children’s Services Susan Devlin said that a permanent inpatient mental-health facility for young people in Jersey was probably not needed.
However, she said work was under way within government to see what alternative solutions could potentially be found. Currently children suffering with mental-health problems can receive short-term care in the Hospital’s Robin Ward.
She said: ‘We don’t have a specialised inpatient service for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service but it doesn’t look like there is a need in terms of numbers ongoing, or a need for something to be open all the time. From time to time we may need something. We are starting to build the service to cope with young people in crisis, and we may be able to do this with more home programmes to prevent people having to go into hospital.
‘We are working with colleagues from HCS on building the service. It is not always ideal for a young person in crisis to have to go to the UK [Health and Community Services], but what we have is that because of the size of the Island we couldn’t hope to always be able to meet the needs of someone who has a complex need.’
She also told the panel that there had been an increase in referrals with regards to mental-health issues, and further resources were being put into dealing with the build-up of cases.
Children’s Minister Sam Mézec informed the panel of the closure of a temporary mental-health facility for young people that had been set up during the Covid-19
crisis. He said the facility had been created to provide care to young people in crisis who could not travel off the Island, but now that this was possible again the facility had closed.
