News

Anthony Douglas is having to deal with yet another crisis at the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service as he nears the end of his first year in charge of the organisation.

Last week, Community Care revealed Douglas had instituted measures to stave off a possible £4m overspend and requested £2m from the Department for Education and Skills to ensure an adequate pay settlement for staff this year. This is despite the fact that Cafcass has already saved £3.85m this year.

Douglas, who joined as chief executive on 1 September 2004, has had to deal with a number of problems.

Militant fathers' groups have conducted a hate campaign against staff, while there has been a massive increase in time-consuming "rule 9.5 cases", private law cases where guardians are appointed to represent children when it is imperative that their voices are heard - there were 1,120 cases in 2004-5. In the same period Cafcass dealt with 31,000 private law cases and 13,000 public law cases.
In addition, the government has pushed ahead with plans to increase Cafcass's role in mediating between parents and enforcing contact.
But, by many accounts, Douglas, Cafcass's third chief executive in its four-year existence, has performed well. Case backlogs have decreased in private law (see box), relations with fathers' groups have thawed and he has started to tackle the mistrust among staff that has plagued the body since its birth.

Malcolm Richardson, chair of the Magistrates' Association's family proceedings committee, says that Cafcass is in a much better state. "Most people I've spoken to believe he's a good man doing a good job. He understands the issues and is grappling with them with enthusiasm."

Douglas starts his second year looking to modernise the service. His draft five-year plan is due for publication next month.

But just as Douglas looks to the long term, Cafcass finds itself in the familiar position of crisis.

In a memo sent to staff earlier this month, which outlined the cost-cutting measures, Douglas said the government was unlikely to provide the £2m, which reflects grant money withheld in 2004-5.

A "worst-case scenario", according to Douglas, is that Cafcass will only be able to give staff a 1 per cent pay rise this year.

In a letter to junior children's minister Maria Eagle last month, he claimed unions Napo and Unison "would be obliged to ballot for industrial action" should this happen.

Guardians' body Nagalro also warns that self-employed practitioners - whose relationship with the organisation has never been good - may quit in droves in the event of a poor settlement.

Nagalro chair Alison Paddle claims that, to save money, Cafcass is using fewer self-employed professionals, leaving children waiting longer for a service.

Douglas admits his emergency measures, which include a freeze on non-essential recruitment, may push up backlogs again.

He also claims that, in the current climate, the family resolutions pilot - the blueprint for early intervention in private law cases - cannot be funded beyond September.

However, these bad problems look considerably worse in the context of Cafcass's long-term ambitions. Douglas wants all the backlogs to be eliminated, while increasing Cafcass's role in mediation and conciliation in private law. Although this should eventually save money in reduced court work, it will require up-front investment.

The Children and Adoption Bill promises new responsibilities in monitoring parents' compliance with contact orders, which Douglas says will require new money.

And Cafcass will be undertaking these new responsibilities amid a huge projected increase in demand for these services.

In its five-year strategy last year, the Department for Constitutional Affairs predicted that the number of child residence and contact orders would double from about 90,000 to 180,000 from 2002 to 2008.

And, rather than cut training, Douglas wants to double spending on skills, reflecting in part Cafcass's convergence policy, in which practitioners from private and public backgrounds are trained to perform both roles.

Douglas is also seeking a new contract with professionals, both employed and self-employed, exchanging higher productivity for an enhanced pay and benefits package for fewer practitioners.

The goodwill of staff - always delicate at Cafcass - will be paramount, and a pay settlement that triggers a strike or an exodus of the self-employed will be devastating.

The DfES's line is that Cafcass has had a good deal over the past two years, citing the increase from £95m to £107m from 2003-4 to 2004-5 to justify the freeze in 2005-6.

The implication is that the service could be managing its funds better, prompting Napo to call for a National Audit Office probe into the extent to which Cafcass's problems stem from underfunding or inefficiency.

Douglas's position is that it is a bit of both. Like all front-line child care organisations, we are underfunded. We are also not the only organisation to be implementing a change programme. All of them are having to do it on insufficient funding."

There is evidence to support the feeling that the body is underfunded. Finance director Nicholas Maude told Cafcass's June board meeting that "service activity" had increased by 2 per cent since 2004, despite the freeze in its grant. This included a 107.8 per cent increase in "rule 9.5 cases", which take three times longer than average private law cases.

However, the chief executive is also convinced that practitioners can become more productive.

In his letter to Eagle, he said there were areas in which professional practice was "simply not good enough", and declared his ambition "to once and for all deliver a no-delays-or-backlogs service to high professional standards".

But this is an area in which the views of senior management and many practitioners are in sharp conflict.

Paddle says excessive bureaucracy, not practitioner productivity, is the issue. Guardians, in her view, should be given more professional autonomy, not be reined in by limits on how long they should spend on cases, as Douglas suggests. She warns that a conflict with the self-employed will scupper Douglas's efforts to clear backlogs, adding: "Research shows that self-employed people are among the more experienced practitioners and the most efficient in their use of time."


Before he even begins to tackle the productivity argument, Douglas will have to keep staff sweet on pay.

The unions have called for above-inflation pay rises to give staff in England parity with their colleagues in Wales, many of whom have been on higher salary scales since Cafcass Cymru's devolution to the Welsh assembly.

But given its financial position, should Douglas deliver his goal of a cost-of-living increase, he may buy a little time and goodwill from staff to put his long-term plans into action.

Despite the critical situation, his attitude is one of confidence within limits: "If I was to become depressed it would not help anyone. My job is to find the best solution." 

COST CUTTERS
* A freeze on all vacancies unless "business critical".
* Termination of all temporary and agency staff arrangements.
* Halt to IT upgrade and compilation of electronic case records.
* Interviewing children and families in Cafcass offices rather than their own homes.
* Restrictions on travel, post and publishing expenditure.
* External sponsorship of Cafcass conferences.
* Better case prioritisation by practitioners.

TURBULENT TIMES
April 2001: Cafcass established.
September 2001: Decision to end self-employment for guardians quashed on judicial review.
November 2001: Chief executive Diane Shepherd suspended, then sacked in July 2002.
June 2003: Transferred to DfES from Lord Chancellor's Department.
December 2003: Entire board asked to resign after damning parliamentary report.
July 2004: Green paper on parental separation proposes greater role in mediation.
September 2004: Anthony Douglas takes over as chief executive.
October 2004: Cafcass offices hit by intimidation campaign by militant fathers' groups.
August 2005: News of financial crisis emerges.

Public law cases unallocated 2004-5
Oct 04	Nov	Dec	Jan 05	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
296	269	383	275	321	290	287	313	293
Cafcass averaged 2.5 per cent of public law cases unallocated at end of month against a target of 3 per cent
Private law cases unallocated 2004-5
Oct 04	Nov	Dec	Jan 05	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
320	348	296	306	222	168	97	125	170
Cafcass averaged 3.7 per cent of private law cases unallocated 10 weeks before report filing date against a 4 per cent target