Open letter to CAFCASS

“An open letter in respect of my resignation from Cafcass

26 September 2011

Dear  …………………,

I have long had my doubts as to whether Cafcass as an organisation is fit for purposeI have been critical of the honesty and integrity of the management of the service, things that continue to concern me.  I have to agree with the many individuals and organisations who have concluded that the problems of Cafcass are so manifold and entrenched   that any satisfactory solution requires a complete transformation.

This has, inevitably created tensions in my employment, particularly as Cafcass has become increasingly prescriptive in the way in which it requires its advisors to work.  The emergence and consolidation within Cafcass of a ‘compliance culture where meeting performance management demands becomes the dominant focus rather than meeting the needs of children and their families’ (Munro Review of Child Protection: Final Report: HMSO May 2011) is something that I, and many of my colleagues have found to be deeply troubling.

I have therefore, reluctantly, come to the conclusion that it is not possible for me, as a Cafcass employee, properly to represent the interests  of children nor to report independently, honestly and helpfully to the court in a way that is consistent with my statutory duties and my professional conscience.  Fulfilling the statutory duties  of a family court reporter requires a degree of professional autonomy which Cafcass employees are, in practice, effectively denied by the compliance culture and its various managerial buttresses.

I have  therefore resigned from Cafcass.  My last day of service was yesterday.

It is not possible for me personally to contact everyone with whom I have worked over many years but I would like to express my thanks to everyone within the Bristol and Avon Family Justice world for the generous advice, assistance and support I have received in all sorts of ways.  Please feel free to circulate this letter – and apologies to those I have not contacted directly.

Yours sincerely

Charles Place”

Background:

CAFCASS WEBSITE

Charles Place was suspended from CAFCASS in 2009 and allegations of misconduct made against him in connection with his voicing of concerns about the operation of CAFCASS were not upheld by the General Social Care Council. In it’s decision notice the GSCC stated that Mr Place’s criticism of delay in CAFCASS reporting on a private forum was “legitimate” and that “the facts supported the stance taken by [Mr Place] that CAFCASS had put a dishonest spin on the scale of the problems it faced.” The decision notice can be found here.

Anthony Douglas, CEO CAFCASS

Anthony Douglas, CEO CAFCASS

I contacted Charles Place as a courtesy to ask if he minded the above letter being posted on Pink Tape. In his reply Mr Place raises a number of other points which, if an accurate reflection of how CAFCASS is operating, are very concerning. I have thought about whether or not it would be appropriate to include those supplemental comments in this blog post, but it seems to me that the questions raised are serious ones, and which are of public interest. I have however left out parts of the correspondence which might identify any individual, or which concern the detail of Mr Place’s working relationship with specific colleagues.

I do not know whether the information below is entirely accurate – others may respond and tell me that Mr Place is wrong – but I do know that much of what he says is entirely consistent with my own observations and what other CAFCASS officers have told me openly or in confidence. I am however merely an outsider to the organisation, albeit that I have regular and frequent contact with it’s representatives, and struggle daily to match needs of individual families with the a la carte menu of defined and restricted services that is a feature of post-Interim-Guidance CAFCASS.

In fairness to CAFCASS, they have of late received more positive inspection reports than in previous years (one example is here), which is an indication that they are doing something right. It is also fair to point out that CAFCASS, like other areas of the family justice system, continue to operate under increasing demand (see here: August care stats at record levels).

Continue Reading…

Consensus: the CAFCASS way


courtesy of fengergold on flickr

free speech image courtesy of fengergold on flickr

I have been informed today that CAFCASS employees have been forbidden by CAFCASS management to submit their own individual responses to the Family Justice Review. It is one thing to collate individual responses into an organisational response: it is quite another to seek to bar the participation of employees in this review individually. If this report is true it represents a dangerous development. If it is a misunderstanding by staff of a genuine attempt to ensure a well coordinated response it still raises concerns about the effectiveness of communication within CAFCASS. Whilst of course CAFCASS will have real practical difficulty in preventing employees from submitting their own response in anonymised form, the very fact that they may have to do so in a clandestine way (or that they may feel that they have to do so) does not suggest a healthy management culture.

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I  struggle to see how such an approach could be justified – CAFCASS has been the subject of much and varied criticism from diverse stakeholders in the family justice system for some time, and staff morale is known to be low. Suppressing the views of their own staff will not help either of those problems and will do nothing to promote the interests of justice, public confidence in the system, and will not assist in the promotion and safeguarding of the welfare of children. CAFCASS’ main asset is its skilled officers. The Family Justice System is in crisis and facing further crisis as a result of the public spending cuts – crowdsourcing ideas about how we reform our family justice system so that it can survive and renew itself is crucial, and to exclude or sanitise the views of those at the coal face is not ultimately going to be helpful to anyone, including CAFCASS management.

CAFCASS – What to do?

Thank Goodness for that – the new(ish) President of the Family Division has decided not to renew the guidance and may scrap the duty guardian scheme. See this article extracting an interview reported fully in Family Affairs.

On another note, a proposal to scrap CAFCASS and to reallocate it’s responsibilities to local authorities. Clearly something pretty radical needs to be done, but I’m no fan of that as a solution – whatever arrangements are made it is crucial that arrangements for the provision of Guardians, and to a lesser extent for reporting in children matters to be independent of local authorities.