Ex-children's services boss 'still concerned' about care for vulnerable

The Jersey Care Inquiry has partly focused on allegations of abuse at the Haut de la Garenne children's home in the 1960s

A former manager of Jersey's children's services still has "great concerns" about the way vulnerable children are cared for, the Care Inquiry into historical child abuse has heard.

Josephine Olsson ran Children's Services as an interim manager for 12 months up until August.

She was brought in temporarily to improve the department.

Ms Olsson told the inquiry the service had not focussed on protecting children at the time she arrived.

She also said the department lagged a long way behind the standards of the UK.

The professional culture was "archaic", "hierarchical", "paternalistic", "moribund", "under-developed", with "too many internal promotions" and "systemic weakness at director level", she said.

'Great concerns'

Ms Olsson said: "While I was here the number of children in care rose from 75 to 120. This signalled the fact that children and their welfare had not been the focus of Children's Services.

"Those numbers showed that the service had been reluctant to take children into care when they should have been."

Ms Olsson said when she arrived she found numerous investigations under way into cases where children had been seriously harmed, and instigated some herself.

"Team managers were being advised not to take appropriately assertive action and as a consequence children were left unprotected for extended periods of time - and by that I mean years.

"I did not leave the island believing that children were safe, and I still have great concerns about their safety," she said.

Ms Olsson also said the island's justice system is inherently conflicted because prosecutors were also legal advisors to States departments.