Cafcass (the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) figures for April to June 2010 show that the number of care applications were the highest ever recorded for the individual months of April and May.
Compared with the same period in 2009, care applications were up 1.7 per cent, with 2,132 new applications in the quarter.
Alison Paddle, spokeswoman for Nagalro, the professional association for children’s guardians, told CYP Now that all children involved in family court cases need a guardian to represent them.
This is depsite Cafcass plans to introduce the "watching brief" system for non-urgent cases, in which a named practitioner would monitor proceedings by keeping in contact with a child’s solicitor, but would not be involved in court hearings.
"It’s clearly a big problem for organisations when extra cases are being referred, but it’s very difficult to tell reliably which are the most and least urgent, because cases change dynamically," Paddle said. "All children are entitled to have somebody who is available to be active on their behalf."
She added that Cafcass should spend more money on recruiting guardians.
"They have chosen to put their resources into extra management as opposed to the frontline and that is a real pity for vulnerable children," she said.
But Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass, argued that the organisation is doing well because the number of care cases allocated to a children’s guardian has increased from 8,747 in July 2009 to 11,243 cases in June 2010.
"That is an amazing achievement," he said. "I commend our staff for working so hard to provide a service to so many more children. We are using a sensible priority system, which is always subject to judicial oversight in an individual case."
Douglas urged family courts professionals not to focus on "excessive scrutiny of Cafcass", but on how the care system as a whole can best adapt to meet the needs of so many more vulnerable children.
"We are prioritising our work so we can ensure that those children who need a service from us urgently, receive it urgently," he explained.
"In less urgent cases we provide focused and expert pieces of work at critical points in a case and maintain the ability to become more actively involved as the needs of the child demand."
