Our Performance
At Cafcass, our goal is to provide a first rate service to each
of the 83,000 new children and young people with whom we work each
year.
Whilst demand in private law cases
fell marginally by 1.6% compared to 2009-10, demand in relation to
new local authority care applications, which require greater
resources than our other cases, remained at record levels in
2010-11.
Every month bar June and December 2010, we received the highest
number of care applications for that individual month since we
began collecting this data in October 2001.
The demand for our services in 2010-11
Children in Cases
We worked with 82,860 children and young people in England
involved in new cases. 42,145 were males (50.9%)
and 40,715 were females (49.1%). Most children and young
people we worked with were under 10 years old. If we add in the
children whose cases were referred to us prior to 2010-11 and on
which we continue to work, and those whose cases were closed during
the year, the total number of children we worked with is
approximately 146,999. Additionally, we support many
more children and families through the work we commission from
contact centres around the country.
Public Law
In public law, we work with children and young people who are
the subject of a care application or other intervention by a local
authority. In 2010-11 we worked on 12,792 public law cases. Of
these, 9,147 were care cases.
Private Law
In private law we work with children and young people whose
parents are divorcing, separating or who do not live together and
who cannot agree on contact and residence for their children. In
2010-11 we received 43,759 private law case requests
a 1.6% decrease in demand on the previous
year.
Click here to see the full Business
Plan.