Cafcass South East: Improvement in
private law work since late 2007 inspection
An additional action plan, covering South
East specific issues, was put in place straight after the
inspection, and was accepted positively by Ofsted who recognised
Cafcass’ commitment to bringing about rapid improvement.
Anthony Douglas, Cafcass Chief Executive
explains, ”Our public law work is good and the problems in our
private law practice are being urgently addressed – I can already
guarantee significant improvements.
Steps we have taken include the recruitment of
five new practice supervisors to support staff in cases; we have
entered into an innovative contract with Children’s Charity Coram
to provide specialist practice advice to staff; we have improved
the ratio of frontline managers to practitioners to help deliver
high quality assessments, case management and planning; we have
improved our system of screening and risk assessment for cases that
are delayed; we have brought in temporary support to reduce delays
and we are ensuring that regular supervision takes place to quality
assure reports and support our workforce.
The increase in frontline practice supervisors
will mean more support and advice is on hand for practitioners to
discuss complex cases or to reflect on the analysis in their
reports.
The South East has many strengths including
some good practice in public law, good management of resources, and
a good complaints service from which we are learning lessons.
Our KPIs are improving nationally and our policies are robust and
among the best available.
We are determined to continue driving up
practice standards.
The children and families we work with rightly
expect and deserve the highest quality services. I believe
the evidence from our improvement programme to date shows that we
are well on the way to achieving this.”
Nationally Cafcass has implemented the
following changes which will also support improvement in the South
East:
- the establishment of a new Head of Safeguarding post dedicated
to making sure children are protected from harm and continue to be
at the centre of what we do;
- 500 practitioner training courses were run in 2007 and in 2008
we have increased our training budget by 70% and introduced
Individual Learning Accounts to help every practitioner improvement
case planning, recording and assessment;
- a new leadership development programme including the better use
of supervision to support practice improvement;
- establishment of a new feedback system so that we more rapidly
learn the lessons from what children and families tell us;
- the upgrade of our IT systems including our Case Management
System to support better record keeping and performance
management;
- the creation of three national areas (North, South and Central
England) with Operational Directors, supported by 27 Heads of
Service, to drive improvements in management and practice in their
area; and
- improved performance indicators as reported to Parliament
including speedier allocations and increased time spent on dispute
resolution work with families.
We are also working with Ofsted to develop new
measures and standards for our private law work to improve the
quality and consistency of our work.
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