Cafcass to put more resouces where children need it
13 December 2006
Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support
Service, has issued a consultation paper outlining its plans to
deliver better outcomes for children and young people in the family
courts by redirecting more resources to the frontline.
The consultation paper, Organising for
Quality, sets out a programme for Cafcass to deliver in
full by 2010. It builds on the 2005/6 Cafcass consultation -
Every Day Matters and, when combined with our
proposed National Standards, is designed to give our staff the
tools they need to provide the best possible service to children
and families.
Chief Executive Anthony Douglas says:
“Organising for Quality contains a set of
proposals intended to help us successfully meet the challenges we
face over the next few years. All those working in the public
sector are concerned with delivering an improved service whilst
increasing value for money.
"We are faced with rising demand in public law
cases of 6.8% for the period April-October 2006 when compared with
the same period in 2005. We need to focus more resources to
those most in need of our services and develop national standards
in order to ensure that we are providing a consistently high
quality service across the country. In order to do that, some ways
in which we are organised will need to change, as will some working
practices. We are committed to building on our current achievements
in a process of continuous improvement.”
The key practice proposals in Organising for
Quality include access to a national mentoring scheme; a Practice
Advice Line; support to gain a specialist Post Qualifying award;
better sharing of good practice models; and a reduction in
bureaucracy. Key organisational changes proposed include a
reduction in the number of senior management posts; establishing a
National Business Centre; improving our IT systems; creating more
manageable workloads for staff; and paying more competitive
salaries where these fall short of the market level.