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FNF and CAFCASS
19/10/05 - Read the EVERY DAY MATTERS consutation paper on the CAFCASS website.
Please note that FNF has not yet studied this but will obviously be replying. Any comments please to the office (fnf@fnf.org.uk).
email exchange between FNF and CE of CAFCASS 01-08-05
FNF Volunteers Conference 2005
FNF was pleased that the Chief Executive of The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) was willing to talk to our Volunteers conference on 3 July.
This - and the response our volunteers gave him - shows the mutual respect there ought to be.
His presentation is on this website. Click here for PowerPoint or HTML version.
CAFCASS is the crucial organisation in family division. When parents cannot agree the living arrangements for their children and go to court, CAFCASS is asked to investigate the family and make recommendations.
Judges rarely change their recommendations.
The arrangements made by parents who do not go to court are made in the shadow of the decisions imposed in contested cases.
It is often said that 90% of parents 'agree' parenting arrangements. Some might 'agree'. Rather more, we suspect, take advice about what will happen if they go to law and decide to 'go quietly'.
CAFCASS is the key agency in making any change in parenting in divided families. If they recommended more equal care, the rest of society would follow.
The research is that the majority of Non residential parents want to see more of their children than they are allowed, and the majority of children want to see more of their 'second parent' than they do.
The Equal Opportunities Commission report that fathers now provide nearly a third of all parental childcare. No-one has seen any need to investigate the parenting time arrangements in court orders, but the trend seems to be about one eighth of the child's time.
Many children at a time of stress and pain, and where their residential parents will have more demands on them, must find their time with their 'other parent' slashed. The distress of - and damage to - children and their excluded parent is considerable.
CAFCASS is not the only agency in keeping these children and parents apart, but it could be the key one.
True, there is now a presumption that in the 'standard case' visits every fortnight and for some of the holidays are to be allowed. This is progress. This presumption is contested by domestic violence and other campaigners, holding that this 'right' is awarded too often. From our point of view, there still appears a presumption against allowing both parents to have serious involvement, rather than one getting residence and the other being allowed to have visits.
There is progress in this, but painfully slow.
We get reports from our members of excellent work by CAFCASS staff. We get rather more complaints. We naturally only see one side, but too many of them are from people who otherwise seem reasonable for them to be dismissed. Given the 'normal order' we would expect NRPs who are happy not to have much involvement with their children will be satisfied and those who want to be full parents not to be.
We also know of the extent of bias in the areas from which CAFCASS workers come. Historically this was the Probation Service, but there are also links with social work. To see the needs of children in ways that are not biassed by gender stereotypes goes against the trend of most training and writing in social work and probation.
Most shared parenting organisations want to see CAFCASS abolished. FNF does not. Nor.is it likely to happen. Whatever happens 'at the top', there will be a need for someone to make recommendations to the court, and if one 'abolishes CAFCASS' one will probably not abolish its staff, or the values that they impose on families. These will simply re-assemble in some other form to carry on doing the same thing in the same old ways.
Our relationship with CAFCASS leadership has been, and remains, 'friendly criticism'. We agreed with Anthony Hewson, the ex chair, over most things. He failed to turn the organisation around - possibly because he did not recognise how nasty public service and gender politics is compared with private business.
We want to support the successor board in turning the organisation around. Sadly, they have spend much of their time addressing organisational matters and not their service to their users. There has been change here, but insufficient.
We want to see action at two levels, in strategy and in 'operations'
In strategy CAFCASS should cease to be - principally - a cog in adversarial proceedings between parents. It should be a preventative and support organisations for parents making arrangements for their children. The courts would only be used when non-adversarial methods had failed. This requires a seimic change in their resources, training and attitude. This should be financed in FNF's view by reforms in legal aid. This money poured into family division makes things worse. It should be available for adversarial proceedings only in exceptional cases. The rest should go into CAFCASS and other helpful services.
In operations, the board needs to address urgently the attitudes of some of its staff. There needs to be guidance, perhaps based on documents that nearly all family organisations signed up to (at FNF's instigation) years ago. Guidance should ensure that residence orders are given to both parents unless there are contra-indications, and that children got serious involvement of both their parents, again unless there are cogent reasons otherwise. There also needs to be a dramatic increase, and change in stance, in training. Prejudice and discrimination needs to be tackled robustly, and staff need to be equipped to base their intervention on full knowledge of children in general and of the particular children they are dealing with in the families they report on.
John Baker
Updated 19 October, 2005