News

• Cafcass rebel fears board recruitment crisis
• Cafcass backs down over allocation concern
• Cafcass board membership to be reviewed
• MPs say Cafcass close to disaster

The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service is in negotiation with the government over extra funding to cover an expected overspend of £5 million this year, writes Derren Hayes.

Jonathan Tross, Cafcass chief executive, said a record number of cases in the early part of the summer and the large amounts spent on self-employed guardians, were the main factors involved in the agency’s projected overspend.

Tross said the service was managing demand it had no control of within finite resources allocated by the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA). Cafcass has seen the number of public law cases referred to it rise by 7.5 per cent a year, although the rate of increase has slowed over the past few months. It has a budget of £95 million for 2003-04.

Tross said he had had meetings with children’s minister Margaret Hodge, the Lord Chancellor and Department of Health permanent secretary Nigel Crisp, who were “all aware we are struggling in the present financial year, and are potentially going to struggle next year if they don’t align expenditure with demand”.

The financial problems draw into question whether Cafcass will be able to tackle the continuing problem of delays in allocating guardians to children entering the care system – an issue highlighted by this year’s damning DCA select committee report.

Figures for 2002-3 show Cafcass spent 13 per cent of its budget (£12 million) on self-employed guardians. It is expecting to spend a similar amount this year, although some of this year’s expenditure relates to work carried out by self-employed guardians last year.

Tross reiterated Cafcass’ commitment to a mixed economy of employed and self-employed guardians, and said he’d be writing to those who left the service over contractual wrangles to ask them to consider coming back. 

It was also revealed that Cafcass is “unlikely to meet for some time” its new performance targets for allocating a guardian to cases within two days, and will not be completing cases within the aimed 40 week timeframe – as recommended by its new case management protocol - until the beginning of 2006.