Napo slams Cafcass red tape and managerialism
Joe Lepper
Monday, June 28, 2010
Advisory body the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) has become bogged down by red tape and is "lurching from crisis to crisis", according to damning evidence presented to the National Audit Office.
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.
The union claims that staff turnover has now reached about 30 per cent in some areas, with frontline managers regularly working evenings and weekends to cope with additional workloads.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, said: "Napo did, and still does, support the creation and function of Cafcass, but urges the new coalition government to carry out an urgent review of its effectiveness, of the trend towards managerialism and bureaucracy, and the service offered to courts and families."
A Cafcass spokeswoman said: "In keeping with all professionals in the family justice system, we have changed the way we work to ensure we keep pace with the 30 per cent increase in work over the past year. This has placed all organisations in the family justice system under strain, but has positively led to many more children at risk being identified and getting the help they need.
"The new ways of working, which include the duty schemes and have been agreed with the judiciary, have allowed us to make a difference to the lives of more vulnerable children in our society than ever before."
The Cafcass spokeswoman disputed the staff turnover figures supplied by Napo. She said that nationally staff turnover is eight per cent and the highest level of any one area was 19 per cent. She also denied that Cafcass was hiding backlogs.
