States 'raid' on departments' budgets an interesting milestone

HOME was given £73,000 a year extra last week that it didn't want.

Or, to put it another way, it wanted the extra money but thought that coming just a few months after it was told it had to make £600,000 a year in savings, it would be irresponsible to ask for it.

But this States being this States, it decided that while Home can't be fully trusted to be spending its money correctly elsewhere, it saw where this bit was going – into boosting the services offered by the domestic abuse strategy, particularly for helping children – and decided it would be money well spent.

To find the cash the States raided all other departments' budgets – a few hundred here, a few thousand there – including £7,900 from the Home Department itself.

It was an interesting portent for things to come, a gentle hop along the way to prioritising revenue spending, which is one of the goals of the new system of government.

Some members heralded it as a tough decision, except in this case it wasn't. On the one hand they had new services spelled out in a report in front of them that it was very hard to argue against – on the other, just a department name with a pretty insignificant amount against it.

The battle was a little unbalanced.

Interestingly enough, the £28,600 that comes from the Health and Social Services Department just about fully funds the extra needed for the children's therapeutic service they themselves run and had only last year asked Home to provide more money for.

It will cost £455,700 a year to fund the new strategy until 2020, but if you read the report and listened in to the debate, apart from the £73,000 you will have little idea of exactly where the money is going.

This was far removed from the 'justify your budget from the ground up' philosophy – just a rollover of current spending.

There is no budget breakdown except in those areas where more was needed and not a whiff of the key performance indicators for how things have gone compared with target in the brief review provided in the 2011 to 2014 update. This led to an unbalanced debate.

There are figures in the main report, of course, and compelling ones they are too, but always be wary of what's missing.

In 2014 there were 12 incidents of domestic abuse reported to police every week.

There is some play made that this is a 28% decrease in reporting since 2008 and the strategy started in 2009, although it was only fully funded in 2011. It would be interesting to find out why, though, the number of repeat incidents reported went up in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The greatest number of victims of domestic abuse are in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket, the age profile of those in the 'high risk bracket' also younger than the national benchmark.

In total, 121 high risk cases were dealt with in 2014, just above what national figures would suggest but showing a downward trend.

It is a gendered issue – during 2014, 94% of victims classified as high risk were female.

Relative to population size, domestic abuse incidents reported to police are around two-thirds the level reported in England and Wales.

There are no comparisons given with Jersey, which would have been insightful.

Children were present at 209 domestic abuse incidents to which police were called to in 2014. More than half the children on the child protection register, 73 out of 137, had a known history of violence as a parenting factor.

The report estimates that domestic abuse costs the island £13m. a year, but this figure is extrapolated from the UK so take it with a pinch of salt because as other figures show the profile of abuse is different in Guernsey, as are the services funded.

The new strategy has fresh key performance indicators focusing on outcomes with a pledge to publish results every year.

That is going to be key for the States moving forward – it is not enough to put significant sums of money into social policy without showing the public how that money is being spent and how successful or otherwise it is.

The States may find comfort in having a raft of high-level strategic policies, but it does little to show the public how these actually work, what they actually mean and how the money is being spent.

The domestic abuse strategy relies heavily on the third parties to deliver.

The Hampton Trust delivers education in schools and a perpetrator programme which also has a support service for victims; Family Matters was tendered to run a domestic violence advocacy service, which was taken over by Safer in 2013. Safer now also runs the Women's Refuge.

Treasury has highlighted how commercial funding has been needed on top of taxpayers' money to pay for parts of the strategy so far and it has obvious concerns about what will happen if that is stopped.

It is a problem that the States is increasingly going to have to face as it partners more and more with outside agencies to deliver its work.

In the meantime, the Home Department has been left with an interesting funding conundrum.

It needs to find £600,000 in annual recurring savings this year. When the minister even suggested the £7,900 contribution it would make as a result of the States' decision to raid budgets to help fund the additional domestic abuse strategy services would come from the strategy budget itself, one member was horrified and said it couldn't because this was a States resolution.

So where does it go from here in making savings, given much of its spending comes from States decisions somewhere along the line? Back to the States on the eve of a general election to spell out some truly tough decisions or leaving an apologetic letter in the in-tray of its successor saying you owe Treasury £600,000 and have six months to find it where we couldn't?