News

The nation’s most needy children are likely to benefit under new proposals to shake-up the family justice system in England and Wales, writes Shirley Kumar.

Cafcass, The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, is to have its focus shifted in an effort to cut the backlog of public cases that deal with care proceedings or adoption. To make this possible, it will deal with fewer private family law cases and no longer write 30,000 dispute reports a year.

The organisation’s budget was boosted by £12m to £107m for 2004-05 under the Spending Review to meet the changes.

Because of a staff shortage, Cafcass workers will cross over both public and private cases and are expected to take on a mediation role in an attempt to steer parents disputing over contact away from the courts. Only those with allegations of abuse will be dealt with in court, according to a government consultation published this week.

Funding for contact centres is also of prime importance and is due to be announced by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) shortly.

But the government’s quest to speed up court cases could be putting children at risk, warned voluntary organisations.


Women’s Aid and NCH children’s charity say the proposals will be “disastrous” without sufficient funding. Also, there no clear emphasis on specialist services, where children can build trusting relationships in order to disclose abuse, the groups said.

Children’s policy officer for Women’s Aid Hilary Saunders highlighted the charity’s Failure to protect research in 2003, which showed only six per cent of children who say they do not want contact with a violent parent are being listened to in courts.