Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-151)
MR HARRY
FLETCHER, MS
FIONA ROBERTS
MS LIZ
MOXHAM
TUESDAY 29 APRIL 2003
140. Would you give us an example of what you
mean by "protocol"?
(Mr Fletcher) If an individual officer in an individual
unit believes that if he or she gives information out to a CAFCASS
practitioner about a particular family that contravenes the Data
Protection Act or Human Rights' Act, or rules of confidentiality,
it may well be that that particular officer is right, that is
the local practice. However, in order to get over that so that
it is not hampering the work of the individual CAFCASS practitioner
and, therefore, the child, we think it is a responsibility on
CAFCASS nationally to reach an agreement with the police, with
domestic violence units, with the Department of Health, with psychiatrists
etc, nationally, so that can then filter down so that the individual
who is in the difficult position of being asked to give information,
when their practice tells them it is wrong, no longer believes
that. It is CAFCASS's responsibility to negotiate protocols at
a national level so that individual practitioners understand that
they are not breaking the rules by giving the information over.
141. You do not think that could bring them
into conflict with the Data Protection Act or a legal side of
this?
(Ms Moxham) Can I give an example of how this works?
In my local level we have a regional agreement, or a Manchester
agreement, about the provision of information from the police
in respect of domestic violence and child protection issues. So
the way that works now—and it was problematic for a long
time and inefficient which, in the event, causes delays in making
decisions because you have not got the information required to
give to the courts—is that if I have reason to believe that
the police would have information on a family of mine in respect
of domestic violence I would ring the local domestic violence
unit and ask them to check whether or not they have information—a
yes or no answer. If they do have that information then I will
fax them a pro forma which says "Please send me this information"
and they will now send that back to me in written form, and there
is an agreed timescale for that information to be returned. That
system is designed to take into account the implications of the
Data Protection Act and so on. So it has been clearly thought
through and everybody knows exactly where they stand. It obviously
improves efficiency as well in getting information and getting
on with assessments and proceedings.
142. One last question, so that I understand
it: you outlined to us the agencies that you did not get co-operation
with. Can you give us an example of the agencies that you actually
got co-operation with?
(Mr Fletcher) All the agencies that I listed were
co-operative in two-thirds of the cases. The agency that was least
difficult—in fact there were only five or six complaints—was
schools. The agency that was most difficult (I think there were
16 or 17 complaints) was mental health departments. The fact that,
as Liz has just said, an agreement has been reached in Greater
Manchester which seems to do the trick, we would argue that CAFCASS
nationally should look at this with a view to issuing guidelines
nationally on it.
Mr Dawson
143. Can I just ask about communication and
convergence within CAFCASS, within the agency? It sounds incredibly
divisive. Here is NAPO representing children and family reporters;
here is NAGALRO representing children's guardians. Is it as divided
as it seems?
(Ms Roberts) NAPO does not only represent children
and family reporters. We are recruiting quite a lot of family
court advisers who are the new kind of hybrid practitioner, and
we have also recruited some children's guardians and public law
managers. Traditionally our membership came entirely from the
Probation Service, so up until April 2001 all our members were
in private law, but in fact that is a profile that is changing
a lot. As I say, we represent first-line managers and practitioners
in public and private law and we actually also have some regional
managers in CAFCASS in the membership of NAPO. We do our best
to make sure that all members' views are heard on issues debated
within the Association.
144. How does it work together with NAGALRO?
(Ms Roberts) Yes, we have meetings with NAGALRO. I
am going to one next week. We have got lots of points of common
interest and other points where there are some professional differences,
but we talk. Harry and I went to a meeting with NAGALRO a couple
of weeks ago. It is certainly not divide and rule. We are a trade
union and a professional association and NAGALRO works primarily,
I think (although they will speak for themselves) with self-employed
practitioners who are not, in fact, eligible for membership of
NAPO because we do only represent employees.
145. We have heard a lot of very positive statements
from both child care people and legal people today about the importance
of convergence, and the need to understand the separation of rules.
Do you share some of the same concerns that have been expressed
here and in other forums about family court advisers, just melding
the roles together inappropriately?
(Ms Roberts) I certainly think it has been very tough
for some people who have been recruited as Family Court Advisors
and, more or less, thrown in at the deep end without proper induction.
Some regions have provided good induction for new staff, others
have provided very out-dated manuals and very little else. In
terms of the existing staff that traditionally only worked in
private law or only worked in public law, I think there is a lot
of enthusiasm for taking on new work, but NAPO recognises the
importance of very thorough training and not just training as
an add-on to a full workload; proper training is going to need
some workload relief and on taking on your first case from a new
field of practice you are going to need mentoring and need more
time, and we need to ensure that CAFCASS has resources to back
up the intentions.
Mrs Cryer
146. I wonder if you feel qualified to comment
on the inadequacies or otherwise of recruitment and training in
CAFCASS? Fiona has just mentioned that the training of recruits
is, to say the least, patchy in various areas, and you mention
that in some areas they are just given an old, out-of-date manual
to look at, whereas in other areas there is a proper training
programme. Do the three of you feel that the problems that we
have been presented with by both the Solicitors' Family Law Association
and the Law Society in written evidence can be improved on? That
these problems can be eradicated through in-service training or
even, perhaps, a different method of recruitment?
(Ms Roberts) Yes. CAFCASS have undertaken in their
corporate plan to ensure that new recruits do have some induction
training within the first three or four months and they have signed
a contract with the Royal Holloway College for a much more comprehensive
package. We are very optimistic about that. I think recruitment
may well be helped by the recent harmonised pay package that has
been agreed with the trade unions; that will represent enhancement
of pay, but we need to look at who we are recruiting. CAFCASS
is a predominantly white, middle-aged workforce without people
declaring disabilities, and CAFCASS does need to recruit more
black and ethnic minority workers and more workers with disabilities,
probably also more lesbian and gay staff—certainly staff
that do represent the communities that they serve. CAFCASS does
have a diversity steering group but, again, it is very much at
the paper stage—recognising the problems and not starting
to implement the solutions. If you recruit people in then obviously
you have got to retain them. Certain staff groups may need more
support than they are currently receiving within CAFCASS. CAFCASS
is faced with the issue faced by all public sector workers that
the cost of living in parts of the country and, possibly, parts
of Wales is so high that the salaries being offered are not going
to be adequate without cost-of-living allowances, and we have
in fact asked, in our annual pay claim, for CAFCASS to look at
the possibility of regional cost-of-living allowances. That was
about recruitment. Was there another part to your question?
147. I was just asking you as to whether they
have got the recruitment policy quite wrong. I wondered if you
had any suggestions. You made suggestions actually in that it
may be that the money is not adequate to attract people into the
service. Could it also be that, perhaps, social workers generally
have been given a bad press recently, and this is deterring people
from coming forward and wishing to be social workers? Or do you
think it is just that CAFCASS are not looking in the right places?
(Ms Moxham) I think I would agree with the points
that you are making. Recruitment of CAFCASS workers should fall
into a wider government strategy which is about recruitment of
social workers working with children and families. Again, there
is a real profile image for social workers; they are rubbished
in the press repeatedly and often their conditions of service
are poor: they are working in cramped, overcrowded offices, there
is high turnover of staff and a lack of good support infrastructure
for those staff. Staff are frequently demoralised and there are
high sickness levels already within children and family teams.
That is not the most ideal base then for CAFCASS to be recruiting
from, and it should not be a competition between those working
on the front line in children and family support protection services
and CAFCASS; both services need good quality staff within them.
It seems to us that it is very clear that the Government needs
to do an awful lot to recognise the quality of work that children
and family social workers do and to make that job an attractive,
professional job that people are attracted into; that they feel
it is a responsible job that they would want to do, that is of
benefit to the community. If there is that overall, wider strategy
I do not perceive that there should be a problem in recruiting
from CAFCASS, given that that is a natural pool of workers—one
leads very naturally into the other. That should also address
the diversity issues that Fiona referred to earlier on.
Ross Cranston
148. Since we have someone from Manchester,
can I just ask a question about whether when you talk to your
colleagues you find the problems are not as great in terms of
stress levels and pressures, and so on? There are great pressures,
obviously, in London and I think this was touched on in that you
may need loading in terms of public service recruitment and so
on. Do you find there are differences across the country?
(Ms Moxham) Obviously within different parts of the
country there has been a higher backlog of cases, and the greatest
pressure of that falls on to team managers. We represent quite
a lot of team managers dealing with that backlog and that personal
feeling of responsibility for having all these children sitting
in files on your desk. Within the North West caseloads are increasing,
so we have now got significant backlogs of care cases. In fact,
there has been a huge increase, I think it is a 20% increase,
recently in the number of care cases within the North West that
have come from the courts, with the same number of practitioners
to allocate to. Within private law, most of the private law offices
now have some form of backlog—perhaps not as great as other
parts of the country. I would say that practitioners feel that
they are consistently working to their limits, and that is something
they continued to do through all the chaos that has been around
in terms of the management of CAFCASS since its inception in April
2001.
149. I wonder if I could ask Harry a question
in terms of the Probation Service proper. Do you think CAFCASS
can learn any lessons in terms of the way it manages or trains
or recruits? Is the Probation Service doing it better? Can they
learn anything?
(Mr Fletcher) Gosh. IT immediately comes to mind.
I know you will be talking to CAFCASS managers next week and Colin
Barnes will be coming who has talked a lot to us about IT problems
and the apparent failure of CAFCASS to learn from probation mistakes.
It is a difficult question to answer because the two organisations
are now two years old, or were on1 April. We have, on the probation
side, experienced a whole raft of problems with the national Probation
Service over that two-year period. There have been positives as
well. Going back, the very first question we were asked was whether
we saw ourselves as over-managed and too centralised, and that
would certainly be a very big criticism of what is happening on
the probation side. The centre has grown by 250% since it was
born on 1 April; the front line staff have grown by 10%. We would
not want to see that replicated in CAFCASS—a massive rise
in bureaucrats in the centre producing endless audits and questionnaires
for practitioners to fill in. I think it would be a case of learning
from the negative experiences that the Probation Service and probation
practitioners have experienced over the last two years: do not
make the same mistakes.
150. In your evidence you mentioned support
services and you also say, very helpfully, I think, that CAFCASS
should develop its role as an adviser to government. Given all
the pressures, do you think that that is on the cards in the near
future?
(Mr Fletcher) Clearly, at the moment, it would be
difficult for it to realise that. I think if CAFCASS was to develop
the expertise on child protection and related issues then over
the next few years it should have a role of advising the Home
Office, Social Services and all other government agencies when
children's rights and children's issues come up as matters of
policy. We did use the analogy in the evidence of CRE, which has
a case worker function albeit a smaller one than ours proportionately
but who also has a role of advising government on policy, and
we hope that CAFCASS centrally can develop that expertise. Certainly
if it consults with Liz, Fiona and our other 560 members, that
would be a help to it to develop that expertise.
Chairman
151. Thank you very much indeed. We are very
grateful for your evidence, both written and your presence this
morning, and it will be very helpful to us in reaching some conclusions.
(Mr Fletcher) Thank you for the opportunity
to come.
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