In its evidence to the National Audit Office, which is reviewing whether Cafcass offers taxpayers value for money, family court union Napo says that staff are being overworked and measures taken to cut caseloads have failed.
Cafcass introduced a duty system where a team handles and prioritises cases, but Napo says "this is not an efficient use of resources and results in duplication and bureaucracy at the expense of good practice".
The union adds that its members spend up to 80 per cent of their time "on case recording and in front of computers" rather than with families and children.
It accuses Cafcass, which was launched in 2001, of hiding backlogs by nominally allocating cases to senior managers who don’t see families.
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