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A parliamentary report into the children’s guardians organisation reveals a story of conflict and mismanagement. Derren Hayes reports on how Cafcass got into such a mess.

Alan Beith doesn’t have to think long or hard about how poorly constructed the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) is.

"I can’t think of an organisation set up so inadequately," says the MP and chairperson of the all-party select committee of the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

The committee’s report into the organisation is damning in its verdict on nearly every aspect of Cafcass’s work and formalises what most people already knew: that, since its launch two years ago, the organisation has struggled to live up to its mantra of representing the interests of children and young people in care proceedings.

In Beith’s words, the report leaves Cafcass "with a desperate need to raise its game".

The result of this has largely been seen in delays in Cafcass appointing children’s guardians to cases. The severity of the delays has been debated at length - the inquiry was told that in some parts of the country it reached 90 days - but the report notes that any delay "undermines the welfare of children, their rights and those of their parents".

However, delays are a symptom. The report focuses on many of the causes.

Although there has been an increase in the number of cases in which it is acting, the effect has been magnified by the shortage of guardians working for Cafcass. This can, in part, be attributed to the national shortage of social workers, but also to the dispute Cafcass had with self-employed guardians just weeks after being established.

The dispute over the tax status of self-employed guardians led to Cafcass withdrawing self-employed contracts, a decision overturned in the High Court after a challenge by guardian association Nagalro. It also resulted in a general moratorium on recruitment.

The report states that behind the history lies "an unfortunate tale" of conflict between guardians and Cafcass management, "the legacy of which continues to affect the service today. The overall impression guardians were left with was that they were undervalued".

Despite tax and pay issues being resolved, hundreds of self-employed guardians voted with their feet and Nagalro believes Cafcass continues to operate policies that discriminate against them. A recent poll showed the number of self-employed guardians spending more than 80 per cent of their time on Cafcass work has halved since 2001.

Attracting back these guardians is key to Cafcass overcoming its workforce crisis, says Beith.

"They have been treated badly," he says. "Cafcass needs to make it clear it is committed to a mixed economy workforce.

"Without significant recruitment and the ability to draw quickly on self-employed guardians, delays won’t be tackled."

Alison Paddle, chairperson of Nagalro, believes if there was a "very public commitment" to a mixed economy linked to discussions on workload planning and management practice, "quite a number could be won back".

"We think this is the last opportunity," she says. "There is no way I can persuade any guardian to come back unless Cafcass does some significant changing."

She says this needs to include a major overhaul of the Cafcass board - another issue picked up by the committee. The report states the board has failed to hold management to account.

The lack of board members with experience of child care proceedings or front-line practice - only one has experience of court reporting - has resulted in it failing to "deal effectively with the task with which it is entrusted". One board member admits the board is "disempowered, and unable to make a valued contribution to the oversight and strategic direction".

"The lack of experience relevant to the board’s sphere of work is striking," says Beith. "I think the whole membership of the board should be reviewed."

Paddle says it would be "extremely worrying" if there were no changes. "We want to see some high-profile appointments of people who know the family court business inside out."

The report calls the board’s response to submissions sent to the inquiry "deeply depressing", with the chairperson and other board members "determined to bury their heads in the sand and pretend there is nothing wrong".

This attitude still prevails. In the response issued to employees by Cafcass chief executive Jonathan Tross last week he says he "personally regretted" the criticism of board members who had "steered Cafcass through a difficult period demonstrating dedication and commitment to the interests of children and the service".

Beith also recognises concerns that the Department for Constitutional Affairs - formerly the Lord Chancellor’s Department - has too much influence over the board and recommends a clarification of the lines of accountability. "It appears the board was incapable of making decisions without referring to the department, which it should not need to do," he says.

The committee admits that delays in appointing board members, the lack of a shadow board to bed in the organisation before its official launch and the loss of the original chief executive in its first year were all factors, the blame for which lies partly with the department and the then LCD minister Rosie Winterton.

Short-term thinking is a common criticism through the report, and this is typified in Cafcass’s approach to IT. Beith says the committee "would have regarded IT as a significant failure if there weren’t bigger failures". Initial attempts to create an integrated case management system were halted, wasting millions of pounds, and the committee says it doubts whether a simpler case recording system will be enough in the medium-term.

The organisation is still using "rickety" paper-based systems to collect information about cases and service needs. "People are using IT systems you could get from high street stores," says Beith. "This is supposed to be a serious case management system and it is not." He adds that more resources are needed to address this.

Cafcass’s failure to establish "even a minimum training and professional development strand… is one of the more serious of its early period", the report says. It failed to take forward much of the preparation work done by professionals or use training courses in the field.

The worst failure of all, though, is the lack of proper induction training. It amounts to what inquiry witnesses described as little more than a "trip around the bay".

The committee report recommends establishing a dedicated training and development strand in Cafcass and for a board member to take responsibility for it.

Paddle says there is pressure being put on some newly employed guardians to take on too much work, while self-employed guardians are underused.

Cafcass argues that the committee focused too much on its history and that many of these problems from the early days have been overcome. But, as Paddle points out, this focus does provide "external confirmation and validates concerns".

And questions remain about those early, bungled months. The committee has recommended the National Audit Office investigate what Beith calls "the misuse, mismanagement or inappropriate use" of millions of pounds of money from its start-up budget.

This includes £9m spent on a task force, working to smooth the transition from separate services to a unified one, whose work was never used. Also, the former director of operations’ submission to the inquiry revealed that, at the time of his appointment, Cafcass was spending £9,000 a day on consultants’ fees.

The one issue that everyone agrees on is the high quality of guardian work throughout Cafcass’s brief history.

"Under considerable pressure, practitioners have continued to do a good job and are trying to make children a priority," says Beith. By contrast, Cafcass has "not convinced anybody it has made children its priority".

Ultimately, this is what the organisation will be judged on in the future.

Report available here

Have your say

Can Cafcass persuade the guardians who left the service to return and, if so, how? Read responses to our 'Have your say' debate