Cafcass succeeding in reducing damaging family court
battles
19 July 2007
Cafcass, the organisation that represents children’s interests
in the family courts, is succeeding in helping families turn away
from damaging court battles. Extended conflict between
divorcing and separating parents has been shown to cause distress
and sometimes harm to children.
The findings, which are published today in
Cafcass’ 2006-07 Annual Report, show that the 33.6% increase in
Family Court Advisor time spent on dispute resolution work for
divorcing and separating parents (private law) resulted in around
60% of interventions achieving full or partial agreement.
This is combined with an 8.4% reduction in court reports (section 7
reports) into the welfare of children whose parents are divorcing
or separating.
Cafcass Chief Executive, Anthony Douglas
says:
“2006-07 has been a year of important
developments across many areas of our work. One of the most
striking developments, in a year of continuing progress, has been
the success of our dispute resolution interventions. Whether
it be the North East Children’s Conciliation Service in Newcastle
or Family Group Conferencing in London we are committed to reducing
family conflict to provide better outcomes for children.”
We responded to 23,942 requests for private
law reports during 2006–07, compared with 26,144 in 2005–06, a
reduction of 8.4%. This suggests that our dispute resolution work
as an early intervention measure is becoming more successful. This
represents a major shift to preventative work across the entire
English family justice system.
Case
Study: Managing our resources: adapting to
rising public law demand
Focusing on dispute resolution for private law
cases is helping our Liverpool team to manage the increase in
public law cases.
“Like other teams across the country we are
seeing a rise in public law cases, which puts practitioners under
great pressure,” says Colin Derby, Service Manager. “Over the past
year we’ve seen a 35% increase in public law cases and a 60%
increase in Rule 9.5 appointments.”
Liverpool has dealt with this pressure partly
by working with local judges to focus on dispute resolution for all
private law cases.
Designated Family Judge Margaret De Haas QC
says, “It is important that the judiciary and courts work with
Cafcass staff to provide as flexible a service as possible to meet
the needs of children and families. If this is achieved by creative
use of the dispute resolution scheme rather than the routine
ordering of Section 7 reports, then this should be done.”
“Previously as a team we were struggling to
complete reports in less than sixteen weeks,” says Colin. “But now,
even allowing for Family Court Advisors’ busy schedules, matters
are being dealt with more speedily. So the children benefit from
earlier action and the FCAs also benefit from being better able to
manage their own workloads.”