Examination of Witnesses (Questions 295-299)
MS ROSIE
WINTERTON MP, AND
SALLY FIELD
22 MAY 2003
Q295 Chairman: Ms Winterton, welcome
to our session. We appreciate the fact that you have taken a close
interest in the proceedings in the Committee on CAFCASS so far;
we are very much looking forward to hearing from you. It is a
change for us, because we used to sit on the same side of the
table, asking other people questions.
Ms Winterton: We did; we certainly
did.
Q296 Chairman: I think probably you
would like to say a few opening words to us, before we start on
the questions, so please feel free to do so; and welcome, Ms Field,
also.
Ms Winterton: Thank you, Chairman.
I have been Minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department for Family
Justice since June 2001, and during that time I have been very
aware of the difficulties that CAFCASS experienced in its first
year, particularly, and some ongoing problems since then. What
I have done is take a very close interest, obviously, and have
regular meetings with the Chairman and the Chief Executive, but
also I have tried to get out to every region to meet with staff
and practitioners. And I would like to take this opportunity to
say that if it were not for the dedication and professionalism
of those practitioners I think the organisation would have experienced
even more difficulties than it did. When I first started my tours
of the regions, I know certainly that there was a great deal of
distress amongst staff and practitioners. I have to say that I
do feel that situation has improved considerably, that morale
is higher, and that the organisation is stabilising. I will continue
to keep a very close eye on that, for obvious reasons, but I do
feel we are now moving forward and seeing the organisation take
up some of the other issues and pursue those in the way that I
would like to see it doing. Could I also introduce Sally Field,
who is the Head of LCD's Family Policy Children Division. Sally
took up post some seven months after CAFCASS' launch, in November
2001. Sally has responsibility for the Department's Family Justice
Policy in relation to children and for CAFCASS sponsorship.
Q297 Chairman: Thank you very much.
I do not know how far my colleagues share the same reaction, but
I picked up from the previous evidence session something which
really confirmed a feeling that I had picked up earlier in our
evidence sessions. Which is that, despite the general desire of
all concerned that this reform, the creation of CAFCASS, should
go ahead, and was in principle a good thing, organisational reform
had actually stopped people doing their job as effectively as
they were doing it before. That the net effect, illustrated, for
example, by the need to weld together 117 previous employing authorities,
was such that delays began to be greater, and indeed were accepted
as inevitably greater than in the old system, that the process
of reorganisation, not just in the early stages but for a longer
period, actually got in the way of delivering a service upon which
vulnerable children depend utterly, perhaps to a greater degree
than many other public services?
Ms Winterton: I think there were
some very real problems to start with, particularly in terms of
the amount of time that was available to set up the organisation.
There were various pressures on that; the legislation which allowed
set-up was originally planned to receive Royal Assent, I think,
in July 2000, that was delayed till November. There was pressure
for the National Probation Service to be set up; and it was felt
that it would not be possible somehow to take the Family Court
Welfare Service out of that and run it separately. So there was
not the time that was necessary, I think, to have, for example,
a shadow Board to set up all members of the executive team. Following
on from that, there were obviously the difficulties of the judicial
review. So, in a sense, it is correct to say that there were huge
organisational difficulties to start with.
Q298 Chairman: Have you taken a personal
interest in the possibility of recruiting back more of those guardians
who left the service in the course of all these difficulties?
Ms Winterton: I have had a number
of discussions about the whole recruitment process, and I know
that in many areas regional managers have made efforts to contact
previous practitioners to see if they would be interested in being
attracted back. Also, I think that in some areas where they have
tried, for example, I was in Luton last week, what they did there
was try to attract people back by having quite a flexible approach,
for example, by allowing employed guardians actually to work from
home. So I think what they have done is try to make sure that,
in a sense, the attitude taken by management to the working practice
that people had before is reflected, so that some of those people
either will come back as self-employed guardians or will take
up employed contracts but working in a way that they felt happy
with.
Q299 Peter Bottomley: It is generally
accepted that CAFCASS was set up rather faster than it might have
been to match what happened in the Probation Service, so I do
not want to sound political but, in effect, the nationalisation
of the CAFCASS work was driven by the timescale of the nationalisation
of the Probation Service. The Probation Service had a shadow Board,
the child welfare work in courts did not; the same timescale.
Is there a reason for the difference?
Ms Winterton: Anthony Hewson was
appointed, I believe, in November 2000, and, to that extent, he
worked with the Project Team to set up and get the organisation
moving, but I think, ideally, there should have been more time
for a greater run-in period, and it is a matter of some regret
that there was not. In terms of the timing of the National Probation
Service, I have to confess, I do not know for how long that had
a shadow Board set up, I do not know whether Sally Field has any
information about the amount of time that that had, because, in
view of the legislative programme, I am not sure that would have
been any more possible.
Ms Field: I think I am right in
saying, I would have to check, but I think the National Probation
Service is an executive agency,[1]
so we are talking about existing civil servants who are running
in a shadow form, whereas we needed the actual legislation for
the appointment of a Chairman and Board.
1 Note by witness: In fact it is a service,
set up under the provisions of part 1 chapter 1 of the Criminal
Justice and Courts Services Act 2000 comprised of 42 Probation
Boards, which are bodies corporate (these are not, however, Non-Departmental
Public Bodies) overseen by a National Probation Directorate, a
Directorate within the Home Office. Back
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