Caseloads have fallen at Cafcass, but social workers are continuing to struggle with work pressures, according to a survey.
The family court body said that the average caseload for social workers in its long-term teams fell from 21.7 in spring 2022 to 19.9 in May 2023, before dropping further, to about 18 now.
For practitioners managing work up to the first hearing in private law, caseloads fell from 45.5 in spring 2022 to 38 as of May 2023, and then to 37 in May 2024.
Little change in reported overtime since 2021
However, a survey of family court advisers (FCA) by trade union Napo in June 2024 found that 93% of staff had worked extra hours in the previous four weeks that they had not been able to take back. Of this group, 86% said this happened frequently.
The results showed little change from a similar survey of FCAs in 2021, when 88% of respondents said they had done additional hours they had been unable to take part, of whom 89% said this happened frequently.
FCAs in long-term teams surveyed by Napo reported average caseloads of 21.5, above the average for all practitioners.
Fall in demand and action on caseloads
The number of cases open to Cafcass hit a peak of 37,611 in April 2021 on the back of high levels of demand and substantial delays to family court proceedings caused by the pandemic.
Numbers have since fallen by 24%, to 28,504 in July 2024, while Cafcass has also taken steps to tackle caseload levels among FCAs, a point registered by Ofsted in its inspection of the body earlier this year.
These have included applying a prioritisation protocol in areas of high demand, where lower-priority private law cases are overseen by a service manager until they can be allocated to an FCA.
It has also introduced post-assessment hubs in every region; these involve managers overseeing cases for which the work ordered by the court has been completed but a trial is at least six weeks away or not listed, removing them from FCAs’ caseloads.
FCAs’ concerns over practice ‘bureaucracy’
However, respondents to Napo’s survey said their workloads meant they lacked time for reflection or had to cut corners in their practice, while some warned they were experiencing stress or sickness to the point of resigning.
Besides the number of cases held by social workers, Napo said a recurring theme from responses was that expectations placed on staff to “complete an increasing number of tasks, many of which were seen by practitioners as overly bureaucratic”.
In this regard, respondents referred to the level of form-filling required for each case, quality assurance activities and aspects of Cafcass’s Together for Children practice model, such as writing introductory and endings letters to children and developing storyboards to explain to children what is happening to them.
In its inspection, Ofsted found that the model had been “instrumental in promoting practice that is kind, sensitive and respectful…that has children’s welfare and safety at the forefront of thinking” and had been “embraced by an overwhelming majority of the workforce”.
What FCAs see as a manageable caseload
When asked what would be a safe caseload, the average answer given by respondents to the Napo survey was 17.4.
The union called for Cafcass to reduce caseloads to 17-18, and urged “a rebalancing of priorities to give practitioners more time to work with families and increase managers availability to provide effective support and supervision”.
In response, a Cafcass spokesperson said: “We have actively reduced caseloads for our social workers. This was reflected in their feedback to Ofsted inspectors earlier in the year. We understand the importance of protecting social workers from unmanageable caseloads, which is why we set a cap during the pandemic when the courts were struggling to conclude proceedings and why we introduced the prioritisation protocol.”
‘Further reducing caseloads is a management priority’
However, the spokesperson pointed out that about 40% social workers in long-term teams held more than 20 cases, which is the level the organisation believes enables relationship-led practice.
“So, we are not yet where we want to be in every part of the country,” they added. “Further reducing caseloads is a management priority in those service areas where the average caseload is higher than the national average, not losing our focus on the needs of children and families.
“We are working with our partners in the family justice system to reduce demand and the additional work caused by delayed proceedings. We are also in the process of introducing a framework for a balanced workload, which will reflect what we see is reasonable and fair to expect of a confident and competent social worker at Cafcass.”
The spokesperson said Cafcass planned to “work collaboratively with our family court advisers and children’s guardians, and with our trade union partners to achieve our intention to reduce their average caseload to 18-20 active children’s cases in all our service areas”.
Napo general secretary Ian Lawrence said that, while the union was disappointed by the survey results, it was “pleased that senior managers have shown a willingness to engage on the findings”.
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Gosh, my role is slightly different now but in many years in the longer term/work after first hearing team my caseload was never less than 25, often in the 30s. Yes it was horrendous at times. The post assessment hubs are basically a fudge to make caseloads look smaller. Of course parents are going to continue to call the person who prepared the court report and did the work with the family, it will just look like we aren’t actually working it.
I think the letters to children are an integral part of the job and essential to the work we do for children and families. Definitely not bureaucratic. However, yes there are increasing tickboxes and increasing pressure to do compliance/measurable parts of the role. They can’t easily measure what’s really important so tend to slip into a focus on tickboxes which are measurable. Sadly this I think is related to a shift in culture under the current leadership team who came from LA backgrounds. Some of it is very positive – I like and embrace the Together framework – but the relentless push for bureaucratic box ticking does make me think my future may lie elsewhere now.
If they brought back SureStart with it’s early help ethos…TAC…Stay and Plays (where families are suported to recognise they need help) and agencies work seamlessly…to provide that help…then it will allow SW to focus on those who are in need of a more robust approach…
My heart goes out to those who find themselves overwhelmed by having to balance the caring and bureaucratic requirements of the job.
Prioritising is easier said than done when client needs are so great and varied.
All Supervisory staff need to be be chosen for their capacity to offer genuinely empathetic support to their colleagues. This is difficult when supervisors are so often part of the very system that ‘drives’ management requirements. Encouragement and compassion matter. Being ‘heard,’ ‘believed’ and supported matter whatever the institutional demands require of individuals.
The whole unpaid overtime / flexi time is a complete con and is nothing short of exploitation of social workers.
The unions should be all over this but many social workers (across all services) are not in unions and continue working extra hours on an unpaid basis.
There are very few jobs in the country where staff would be expected to work extra hours for free without any pay whatsoever and on some vague promise that you will be able to take the time back.
Workers need to stop working over their hours…
Excellent comment. A lot of LA’s got away with saying you are only allowed to work up 2 max days of TOIL, and anything extra hours are on a ‘loose it’ basis. I rarely ever even got to use 1 day of genuine TOIL per month, it was more like 1 or 2 days of TOIL per year if I was really lucky. I use to work a 70 hour weeks, and only ever got paid for 35 or 36. However if the rare occasion I was sick or when a public holiday came up, could never use any of those hours. I use to say to my managers when they questioned my hours, I already worked my 36 hours the week before, but the next Monday morning. No other profession would put up with this. That’s why I lam leaving the profession, virtually a 100% job dissatisfaction rate across the board.
Exploitation is the word. This contradicts social work values and social work managers need to be held accountable. Where is Social Work England in this?