New Joint Agreement issued by Cafcass and President of the
Family Division
Cafcass Chief Executive Anthony Douglas and the
President of the Family Division, Sir Nicholas Wall have issued a
Joint Agreement, effective from 1st October 2010 which builds upon
the success of the Interim Guidance in tackling backlogs and which
places the emphasis on good local agreements continuing for another
year, until October 2011.
Anthony Douglas welcomed the new Agreement saying, “Through
brilliant local negotiations, and sheer hard work by our local
staff, we now have viable and sustainable agreements with judges
and courts all over the country about the priority work we need to
focus on to assist children, families and courts in the best way we
can, within the resources we have. Feedback from judges about these
local agreements has, without exception, been positive. We can
build on this and strengthen our joint approach still further over
the next year.”
The Agreement will last for 12 months and seeks to build on the
positive inter-agency partnerships that have been established in
many parts of the country between the Judiciary and local Cafcass
offices. In particular, it seeks to continue to reduce backlogs
which have fallen dramatically since the introduction of Interim
Guidance. The latest national figures[1] show that 11,944 care
cases are allocated across the country (or 93.1% of the care
workload) with only 151 care cases remaining unallocated and a
further 734 cases being worked on proportionately by Cafcass
practitioners providing duty advice, as provided for by both this
Agreement and the former Interim Guidance.
Click here to read
the full press release and the new Joint Agreement.
[1] Taken from our national Case
Management System on 28th September 2010. This is a live
system.