Cafcass chief executive Anthony Douglas has hit back after
Ofsted published its third damning verdict this year on the family
court body's private law practice.
Douglas said the findings predated Cafcass's generous government
grant settlement this year and predicted that private law would
bounce back at the next inspections.
The
inspection of the experience of Cafcass service users in South
Yorkshire rated private law practice as "inadequate" and public
law "adequate", the bottom two of four gradings.
The result from the inspection in February matches the finding
from a report in May on the
South East region, while a report on
the
East Midlands in February found services overall were
inadequate.
Adequate
Douglas said "at the very least" he wanted private law to be
graded as "adequate" in any future inspection, but he added: "We
need to be good to outstanding in all parts of our work. You can't
have full public confidence without that."
The South Yorkshire repeated many of the previous two reports'
criticisms of private law: inadequate assessment of domestic
violence and its impact on children significant delays in case
allocation, and inadequate case recording and management.
Ofsted said some of these issues, for instance on domestic
violence, had been identified as far back as 2005.
Addresss the failings
Douglas said Cafcass would address the failings through a
significant increase in spending on training and a new national
practice and performance assessment system, launched this
autumn.
Under this, practitioners' work will be graded according to
standards currently being agreed between Ofsted and Cafcass, with
indivdually tailored training programmes put in place to correct
deficits.
Paul Bishop, Cafcass representative for trade union Napo,
welcomed the system, saying it would demonstrate to Ofsted the
level of good practice in the organisation. But he said it should
not be continued "year after year", with investment instead
switched to direct work with children. He added that the delays
identified by Ofsted required more frontline staff.
• Report here
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