Cafcass Annual Report & Accounts
20 July 2004
Today, Cafcass published its Annual Report
& Accounts for the financial year 1 April 2003 to 31 March
2004.
This completes the third year of operation for Cafcass.
During this time, Cafcass has continued to face significant
organisational scrutiny and upheaval with the resignation of the
previous Board and Chair last autumn. There followed the
appointment of a new Chair, Baroness Pitkeathley last December and
the subsequent appointment of a new Cafcass Board at the turn of
this financial year. In addition, government responsibility
for Cafcass formally transferred from the Department for
Constitutional Affairs to the Department for Education and Skills
on 12 January 2004
But in parallel with this activity, the core
business of Cafcass has remained focussed on its responsibility to
ensure children and young people are put first in family
proceedings, that their voices are heard, that the decisions made
about them by the courts are in their best interests and that they
and their families are supported throughout the process.
Clear progress has been made and the service
provided by Cafcass has improved in a number of crucial
areas.
Performance highlights for 2003-04
include:
- Cafcass dealt with 33,803 private law cases and 13,470 public
law cases. Together this touched upon the lives of 73,937
children and young people.
- In public law cases (#1) a backlog of 718 unallocated
cases in July 2003 was reduced to 290 by March 2004.
- In private law cases (#2), Cafcass consistently achieved the
Government set target of at least 95% of requests to be allocated
10 weeks before the filing date.
- A new comments and complaints policy was
introduced in April 2003 with a view to making the procedure more
streamlined and easy to follow.
- Harmonisation of the terms and
conditions of our staff has now been completed
- Cafcass played a full part in the development of a protocol for
the case management of public law proceedings. This protocol
was implemented in November 2003
- Cafcass has improved the induction training
for all new members of staff and ensures it is carried out within
12 weeks of joining.
Baroness Pitkeathley said: “It’s been
another challenging year but the spirit of this organisation and
its people is strong and has driven through major improvements
despite ever growing demands on our service.
“We look back on the year with some pride for
what we have achieved but, more importantly we move forward with
confidence, optimism and unswerving commitment to the interests of
the children and families we are here to support.”