News

A group of self-employed children’s guardians has told MPs that the quality and standard of employed children’s guardians has dropped since the establishment of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, writes Derren Hayes.

While giving evidence to the inquiry into Cafcass by the committee on the Lord Chancellor’s department, Nagalro representatives said they were concerned that new employed guardians were poorly trained and lacked social work experience.

Children’s guardian Carol Edwards said the requirement for new Cafcass guardians’ child protection experience had been reduced to three years from the five years pre-Cafcass.

“This is jot a job for recently qualified people: it’s for senior social workers that requires long-term child protection experience,” she said.

Edwards added that Cafcass’s support structures for new practitioners, many of whom came from a non-social work background, were “fragile and poorly organised”, and that “[the new practioners] are in great difficulties as a result”.

New chairperson of Nagalro Alison Paddle said the new practitioners lacked clarity over the exact nature of the guardian role, how organisations worked and how they influenced them, and the way to properly use the system.