Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 8 APRIL 2003
MR KIT
CHIVERS AND
MR ARRAN
POYSER
20. Surely there is a case for you looking back
historically to see whether or not services have got better or
worse.
(Mr Poyser) There is a case for looking at historical
reports. There would be issues about what standards those reports
should be judged against just as there is now. What might have
been good enough in all sincerity five years or seven years ago
might not be acceptable now as one hopefully becomes more demanding
about standards.
21. They might be better.
(Mr Poyser) It could have been better or it might
have been insensitive to diversity issues or to human rights issues
or it might have been insensitive to the focus of the child, which
has certainly been of a higher profile in more recent times.
Chairman
22. A moment ago you mentioned delay. Is it
the Inspectorate's view that if a child has been wrongly or inappropriately
moved from the parental home and proceedings are pending, then
any delay at all, even of days, is potentially harmful to the
child and its relationship with the parents?
(Mr Poyser) Emergency protection removal or issues
like that in our view are the most urgent of cases where guardians
and solicitors need to be appointed in those public law proceedings,
they would come top of the list. Some secure accommodation applications
would certainly come top of the list, but at least you could almost
always guarantee that there was a solicitor there and certain
private law applications are extremely urgent. It is difficult
to generalise. CAFCASS earlier this year did issue national guidelines
about the criteria to be applied, but certainly children who have
been removed from home in public law cases and who are the subject
of care proceedings ought to have a guardian and a solicitor within
24 or 48 hours.
Peter Bottomley
23. I think the point I heard is what about
the court actually having the advantage of the guardian's report
to decide whether the child's removal from its home was wrong
and if that comes a year later there is a problem. Can I perhaps
switch to the budget. Do you only get concerned in arrears where
there is inadequate funding for CAFCASS?
(Mr Chivers) We are concerned about the standard of
service that is being provided as it is happening and the effect
of any budgetary constraints on the actual service.
24. If you could see in advance that there is
going to be inadequate funds for the quality of service that is
necessary, do you get involved at the stage when the budget is
being set or do you only pick this up from your inspections?
(Mr Chivers) We observe what we see in the field,
but I must say that budgetary constraints have not been a problem
as yet. In the first year of its operation the budget was actually
underspent and CAFCASS was able to carry forward some budget,
and since that first year there have been substantial increases,
last year to £85 million and this year to £95 million.
The Lord Chancellor has shown a willingness to put money into
this service.
25. Is it not also possible that a budget can
be underspent because the system is not working, but managers
can be saying locally or regionally you cannot have the money
you need because we would overspend if we let you have it?
(Mr Chivers) There was certainly a problem in that
first year which was why there was the underspend in that there
was a good deal of uncertainty in CAFCASS in its early months
about what its budgetary position was, what its obligations were
in relation to the £72 million which it had been given for
its first year and for that reason there was a bit of a paralysis
in its early months when it was very difficult for people in the
field to get approval to the creation of necessary posts or necessary
bits of expenditure and training was held back because people
were not sure that the money was there, but once it became clear
that the money was there things became better.
(Mr Poyser) I think it is fair to say that at the
moment CAFCASS's budget per region has been largely historically
based rather than related to need and we have recognised that
there is a degree of unfairness among regions. Certainly when
we inspected headquarters in October/November 2002 they were keen
to approach the allocation of resources on a more rational basis.
In order to do that one needs, apart from issues about staff costs,
to have some more detailed understanding about counting the business.
If you are only going to count, for example, reports rather than
Family Assistance Orders or other aspects of the business then
one is likely to get some distortions. We would expect that CAFCASS
would have a more robust system for dividing the cake between
the regions regardless of the size of the cake.
26. I can understand that. Is it possible for
anyone to say to you as an inspectorate—and it is interesting
to read your Report which came out yesterday—they find it
difficult to do their jobs properly and reach their quality because
of money? Is it possible for someone within the service to say
we think this is a budget-led service rather than a child-led
service?
(Mr Chivers) I do not think many people would say
that the budget was the main problem at the moment.
27. Could they say that to you?
(Mr Poyser) Yes.
(Mr Chivers) They could say it to us if that is what
they thought. So far in our inspections we have not really analysed
the financial situation as such, but I do not think that anybody
has suggested to us recently that inadequate provision was being
made for the service in aggregate. It is a question of making
sure that that money is allocated properly, as Mr Poyser said,
and then spent wisely.
28. So the current situation is that you think
the budget is not a major problem, the amount of money is not
a major problem and that CAFCASS has got over the TUPE problems,
the tax problems, the timescale problems, the terminations of
senior staff problems?
(Mr Poyser) With respect, sir, it is to do with standards.
Would you expect every practitioner, full-time or part-time, to
have their own computer, for example? Would you expect them to
have their own desk? Would you expect in a mixed economy of home
working and office working everybody to have their own office?
There are issues that CAFCASS is struggling with as to what is
the optimum form of provision both on a cost basis but also in
terms of safeguards. There has always been concern about isolated
professionals working from home, for example, not only in terms
of health and safety but because professionally in some of these
difficult cases they might lack the support that they need. I
am sure, as in any public service, people will say we could certainly
use more money and we could spend it very effectively. The big
issue from our point of view is how will CAFCASS allocate resources
towards the "S" in its title, how will it develop a
business strategy to invest in the support side where so far it
has not been developed and there is no clear vision ahead.
Mr Cunningham
29. You have touched on the issue of training.
What does CAFCASS have to do, and how urgently, to address the
issue of training?
(Mr Poyser) I think it is very near the top of my
list in terms of urgent issues and they are dealing with it. Firstly,
there is the issue of induction. It is irresponsible to allow
newly recruited staff to be involved in these cases without a
thorough period of induction, but induction itself does not equate
to full professional development and so we move on to on-going
professional development and although we have not yet seen the
details, we believe that what they have begun to put in place
from this autumn with Royal Holloway is a good foundation. Obviously
one waits to see what is the curriculum and what is the result
in relation to the impact in practice. In our view ongoing training
is absolutely vital.
30. We touched earlier on the question of the
budget. Is there money in the budget for adequate training?
(Mr Poyser) At the present time the budgets are divided
in rather complicated ways. Some budgets are held centrally for
training on certain issues—we are not just talking about
practitioners, we are talking about support staff, finance, specialist
training—and some budgets are devolved to the region. I
do not think, firstly, there is a clear enough picture about what
is being invested in training and that itself is a cause of concern
because that itself means that it is not being given a high enough
national profile in our view at a strategic level. Training itself
is not grossly expensive compared with new buildings and things
like that, but there are issues that need to be factored in. If
somebody is away for several days or for longer periods of time
that needs to be taken into account in terms of the capacity of
that team to do ongoing work, for example.
31. On the issue of training, you said there
were no budget constraints in reply to an earlier question very
often in terms of if you do have budget constraints you have got
to make savings and the training part of the budget is the one
that gets "raided" to make economies. Is that a perception
of yours? Do you think that has happened in any way?
(Mr Poyser) Each region has had a budget for training.
It has been used in a very broad sense. Sometimes it has covered
regional conferences, sometimes it has covered individuals going
on courses. Our concern has been that, whatever the size of the
budget, it has not been systematically used in a way that relates
service priorities and individual needs sensibly. You cannot really
offer training on a first come first served basis by simply asking
at a team meeting who would like to go on such-and-such a course
or conference.
32. You apply it to needs, I accept that.
(Mr Poyser) But your question is still whether there
is enough money?
33. Yes, exactly.
(Mr Poyser) I think overall as an estimate we would
like to see more and certainly in the early days, as Mr Chivers
has commented, decisions about training were held back to a degree
by uncertainty as to what were either in regional or headquarters'
budgets.
34. I would always have thought in actual fact,
whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, to set
the ethos of an organisation to deliver training would be a priority
and I find utterly amazing the reasons that have been given so
far for this not being given tremendous priority. If you have
not got the training right and the principles of the training
right then you have got a problem with your service from where
I stand.
(Mr Chivers) We very much agreed with that in the
Inspectorate, that it is a priority and whatever the budget is
that is being allocated for CAFCASS room must be made in that
for the necessary training, which is a prerequisite to the programme
that they have got of harmonizing the workforce and convergence
and getting people to be able to cover all the tasks.
Chairman
35. Why did you not make specific recommendations
about training?
(Mr Chivers) In our very first Report, the Setting
Up Report, we highlighted the importance of training.
36. But subsequent to that, particularly as
increasingly witnesses have complained to us that there is less
training going on than there was in the old system, one of the
London guardians gave some written evidence to us saying that
the Inner London Panel had an ongoing programme which offered
relevant training to guardians during the year and that experienced
guardians played a major part in passing on their experience to
others and for almost two years none of this has happened.
(Mr Chivers) We have been consistently urging them
to concentrate on training.
(Mr Poyser) I think you will see in our latest Report,
recommendation three regarding the welfare of children, page 45,
it talks about the need for a strategy of knowledge including
research, focussing on what works and CAFCASS's response, which
we also published, to that is that they intend to develop a practice
developed unit which encompasses research and quality assurance
later this year, hopefully linking that, when we discuss it with
them in more detail, to their existing and developing training
strategies. From our point of view the two need to be clearly
linked.
Keith Vaz
37. Why did CAFCASS suspend its plans to develop
a case management system?
(Mr Poyser) Our understanding is that in July 2001
there was some uncertainty as to the definition of what precisely
they wanted from such a system and my understanding is that they
were concerned that this was being led by IT rather than being
led by what was the service needed and they wanted to take stock
at that stage given the turmoil that was happening on other fronts.
I think those were the main reasons why the project was paused
at that stage.
38. How much has been spent on IT, how much
have they spent on hardware, their computers?
(Mr Poyser) I have not got a precise figure in mind,
sir. I can write to you with my understanding of that. It is certainly
several million pounds.
39. We understand that a lot of money has been
spent on the hardware but not very much has been spent on the
software, so you have got the infrastructure there but it cannot
be used.
(Mr Chivers) Our impression is that the hardware is
in place. There is very good IT within CAFCASS. The urgent need
is, as you were implying, Mr Vaz, for a management information
system that is based on that hardware and particularly case management,
being able to identify and track cases so that you know the patterns
of business that are going on.
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