In brief: Young people moving from Children’s Services into adult social care are adding around £1 million to Health and Care Jersey’s budget every year, a senior official has told the Public Accounts Committee. The department is also grappling with sharply rising costs for high-complexity long-term care and expensive specialist mental-health placements in the UK.
A million here, a million there
Health and Care Jersey’s finance and commercial director, Hazel Cunningham, has laid out a stark picture of cumulative cost pressures building inside the Health Department. Giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, she explained that when young people move out of Children’s Services and into adult social care, no budget follows them.
“Individuals transition into adult social care, but they do not have some sort of budget attached to them as individuals, so Health and Care Jersey will then have to pick up the cost of placements in terms of that transition,” she told the committee.
The consequence is straightforward and, for taxpayers, uncomfortable. Referring to transitions from 2025 into 2026 and from 2026 into 2027, Ms Cunningham described the effect as cumulative: “I would say year on year it is an additional £1 million, so cumulatively it is an extra £1 million every year that comes with those high-cost places.”
The department does attempt to get ahead of the problem, working with Children’s Services to estimate how many young people will need adult care and what their placements are likely to cost. Whether that forward planning is enough to prevent the annual shock to the budget is, to put it gently, an open question.
Long-term care costs almost double in four years
The transitioning-youth problem sits alongside a broader and arguably more alarming trend in long-term care spending. Ms Cunningham told the committee that costs for supporting adults whose needs exceed level four of Jersey’s long-term care scheme had almost doubled in just four years, rising from approximately £9.3 million in 2021 to £18.5 million in 2025. The figure is projected to reach around £20 million in 2026.
Level four is the highest standard category under Jersey’s long-term care scheme, covering people who need intensive support such as constant monitoring or round-the-clock supervision. Some individuals have needs so complex that even that level of provision is insufficient, and the additional cost of supporting them falls directly on the Health Department.
That trajectory, from £9.3 million to a projected £20 million in five years, is the kind of chart that tends to concentrate minds in a finance committee, and rightly so.
UK placements: repatriation and rising mental-health bills
Health chief officer Tom Walker used the same hearing to address the Island’s reliance on UK providers for specialist care. He told the committee that officials had identified patients currently receiving care in the UK whose rehabilitation could continue on-Island, potentially offering better value for money.
Bringing those patients back would, however, require additional staff. “That has involved us taking a case to the States Employment Board to increase the workforce, because that means employing more people here to work on the rehabilitation and care needs of those patients currently in the UK,” Mr Walker said. He was careful to note that repatriation would not be possible for everyone: “Of course, there are groups that cannot be repatriated, but we have found some who are essentially in rehabilitation that we could continue their rehabilitation care here.”
On mental health, Mr Walker sounded a more cautionary note. Specialist mental-health placements outside Jersey represent a growing financial pressure, with the Island dependent on UK providers and subject to their pricing. Most strikingly, he warned that court referrals into secure mental-health facilities could cost nearly £1 million for a single person, with those decisions resting with the courts rather than the Health Department.
Source: Bailiwick Express
