Cafcass standards said to be ‘wishful’

Proposed national standards for family court guardians are “wishful, untried, unclear and imprecise”, practitioners’ body
Nagalro has claimed.

In its response to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service’s consultation on the standards, which closed earlier this month, Nagalro attacked the document’s “one-dimensional concern” about resolving cases quickly, saying this was inappropriate for complex cases.

And while the proposed standards acknowledge the importance of practitioner continuity, Nagalro said this was being contradicted by the way Cafcass was increasingly using duty systems to cut delays.

It also attacked the lack of reference to training, on which Cafcass had an “extremely poor record to date”, and the proposed standard on managing resources, which was “inappropriate” for a document about professional quality.

Since the publication of Cafcass’s professional strategy, Every Day Matters, Nagalro has claimed chief executive Anthony Douglas’s programme for cutting backlogs and promoting early intervention was undermining the quality of practice.