Written evidence submitted by His Honour
Judge Bryant, Designated Family Judge, Teesside Combined Court
Centre (CAF 9)
1. I am the Designated Family Judge at Teesside
Combined Court Centre, a position which I have held since 1995.
The jurisdiction of this court covers all or part of the areas
of seven Local Authorities namely two County Councils, Durham
(in part), North Yorkshire (in part), and five unitary authorities
namely Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland,
and Stockton on Tees. So far as CAFCASS is concerned we are served
by the Teesside area based in Middlesbrough and the Durham County
and Darlington area based in Durham and Bishop Auckland; both
those areas are in the North East region of CAFCASS. We are also
served by the North Yorkshire area which is in the Yorkshire and
Humberside region.
2. My submissions are based almost entirely
on my experience with CAFCASS in the area covered by my court
and relate to both public and private law cases. In relation to
the six "key objectives" which have been set for CCAFCASS
I can say that there is at the moment no sign of achievement in
relation to any of them. Four of the "key objectives"
refer to improvement; in each of those, far from there having
been improvements there has been a marked and measurable deterioration
in performance. So far as the other two are concerned the welfare
of children has been compromised by the failure of CAFCASS to
meet its objectives and I have seen no evidence of the development
of the skills of its staff.
3. In order to make clear the extent to
which CAFCASS has failed in relation to its key objectives it
is necessary to look at the situation as it was under the previous
regime. So far as public law cases were concerned, as soon as
proceedings were commenced a guardian ad litem would be appointed.
In my area, and I appreciate that the situation was different
in other areas, there was never any delay before a guardian was
appointed. The majority of the Guardians were self-employed. In
private law proceedings welfare officers were appointed without
delay and produced reports, generally speaking, within 10 weeks.
In January 1997 the Chief Probation Officer and I agreed a statement
of preferred practice which said, among other things, "The
court will normally allow ten weeks for the preparation of a Welfare
Report and the Court Welfare Service will normally produce a Report
within ten weeks". That practice was generally followed although
10 weeks was later extended to 12 weeks in accordance with national
standards. On occasions through staff illness or other reasons
it was not possible to maintain the 10 week figure and, for short
periods, as much as 14 weeks had to be allowed. Where this happened
the situation was very soon remedied by deploying staff from other
parts of the probation service.
4. Since the advent of CAFCASS the position
has been very different and very substantially worse.
5. So far as private law proceedings are
concerned there has, virtually since the inception of CAFCASS,
been a delay in the allocation of cases to Family Court Reporters.
For example on 18 July 2002 Mr Cornwell the CAFCASS manager for
Teesside wrote to me to tell me that on that date there were 37
private law cases awaiting allocation and that 8.5 Family Court
Reporters were preparing 96 reports. In August 2002, following
a meeting with the CAFCASS managers for Teesside and Durham, it
became necessary because of the problems that CAFCASS was facing
to allow a standard time of 22 weeks for the production of Welfare
Reports. Since then the situation has improved; the time for production
of reports in the Teesside area was reduced to 18 weeks with effect
from 1 January 2003, to 16 weeks from 1st February and will be
reduced to 14 weeks from 1 April. It should be noted that when
we reach that improved position from 1 April that will be identical
to the worst situation reached before the creation of CAFCASS.
The improvement in Teesside is not being fully matched in Durham.
There, having come down from 22 weeks to 16 weeks, I have just
been informed that they have found it necessary to go back up
to 18 weeks.
6. In relation to Public Law cases the situation
is if anything worse. These cases concern of course the most vulnerable
children in society and very often involve the vitally important
decision as to whether a child is removed from his or her natural
family. It is essential that the interests of such children are
properly investigated by someone acting on their behalf. As I
have said, before the advent of CAFCASS, Guardians ad litem were
invariably, in this area, appointed immediately. This is no longer
the case. In July 2002, in the letter referred to above, Mr Cornwell
told me that 26 Public Law cases awaited allocation and that 122
cases were being managed by 8 Family Court Advisers. By August
the number of unallocated cases had increased further and cases
where the Court had ordered the appointment of a Guardian in April
still had no Guardian. It is right to say that in all cases a
solicitor has been appointed to represent the interests of the
children and those solicitors have gone beyond the role they are
trained and paid for in attempting to compensate for the absence
of a Guardian; but the roles and qualifications of solicitors
and guardians are very different and a child needs, and in law
is entitled to, both.
7. One might have thought that one advantage
of having a national structure like CAFCASS instead of the former
locally based structures would be that there could be more flexibility
and staff could be redeployed, if necessary on a temporary basis,
from areas which are well staffed to areas which are grossly understaffed
and which have as a result significant backlogs. This does not
appear to be the case. There appears to be little communication
between one CAFCASS area and another and certainly there has been
no attempt, in spite of requests, to provide any assistance from
the North Yorkshire area, which does not appear to be having the
same difficulties as its neighbours, to the adjoining Teesside
and Durham areas. Given that when the Court Welfare Service was
part of the Probation Service such help was forthcoming from elsewhere
in the Probation Service this represents another example of the
deterioration in the quality of service and makes one wonder whether
there is any management of CAFCASS worth the name above regional
level.
8. In addition to taking over the functions
of the Court Welfare Service and the Guardian ad Litem service
CAFCASS took over the functions of the Children's Division of
the Official Solicitor. Although I have no direct experience of
it because it is clear that there is little chance of CAFCASS
legal being willing to become involved in cases in County Courts
a long way from London; it is clear from a letter written to Family
Division Judges and Designated Circuit Judges on 23 October 2002
by Mr Prest the CAFCASS Director of Legal Services (I assume CAFCASS
will have supplied you with a copy) that the service CAFCASS Legal
is offering is markedly inferior to the service formerly offered
by the Official Solicitor. It is also apparent that this is due
to the secondment rather than transfer of staff from the Lord
Chancellor's Department. Those staff are to the apparent surprise
of both parties, who have done nothing to plan their replacement
in good time or at all, now returning to the Lord Chancellor's
Department leaving CAFCASS Legal woefully understaffed.
9. It is abundantly clear that in each of
the three functions it has taken over from three different services
CAFCASS is offering a markedly inferior service to that offered
by each of its predecessors and that it has up to now failed by
very substantial margins to meet each of its "key objectives".
10. Having set out the position in this
area it is appropriate to consider where the responsibility for
this very unsatisfactory situation lies. One does not have far
to look. I have the greatest respect for CAFCASS officers on the
ground and the management at area and regional level. They have
struggled to make the organisation work in spite of receiving
little of the help and support to which they are entitled from
above and in spite of the low morale largely created by the national
mangement. They should bear none of the blame for the failures
of CAFCASS. Unfortunately they are largely hobbled by the incompetence
of the Lord Chancellor's Department in setting the organisation
up and the poor quality of the management at the top of the organisation.
11. CAFCASS was set up largely because
of reforms to the Probation Service which left the Court Welfare
Service out on a limb. It was then bundled up with the Guardian
ad Litem service and the Children's Department of the Official
Solicitor in a single ill-planned organisation. If one examines
the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act and in particular
Schedule 2 it becomes clear that no real thought had been given
to the shape or structure of CAFCASS compared with the careful
and much more successful planning of the new Probation Service.
It has the most rudimentary constitution, very much at the discretion
of the Lord Chancellor. The problem has been exacerbated by rushing
this fledgling organisation into existence prematurely, and with
grossly inadequate preparation, on 1 April 2001, a matter of weeks
after the appointment of its Chair, Board and Chief Executive.
If all that was not bad enough it was funded not on the basis
of a careful assessment of its needs but on the basis of a crude
guess as to what its financial requirements would be which turned
out to be a wild underestimate. As a result it has been grossly
underfunded from the start and when it became clear that it was
severely understaffed the lack of funds prevented that situation
from being remedied for far too long.
12. Had CAFCASS been supplied with a well
selected Board and a competent Chair and senior management it
might have been possible to overcome the disadvantage of being
sponsored by an indifferent and incompetent Lord Chancellor's
Department. Unfortunately the bungling of the sponsoring department
was matched by the inadequacy of the Board and senior management.
Their decision to pick a wholly unnecessary fight with the existing
Guardians about self-employment was an error of monumental proportions
which did immense damage to the morale of the whole service. I
am amazed that the Chair and the Board have not found it necessary
to resign so that CAFCASS can be given a much needed new start.
13. Two years from its foundation there
are signs that CAFCASS, due to the dedication and hard work of
its staff on the ground, may be climbing back towards the standards
to which we in the Family Courts were accustomed before April
2001. It still has a long way to go. It does appear that an appropriate
level of funding is now in place and that in consequence a reasonable
staffing level will shortly be achieved. One must however be doubtful
about the future until one sees an acceptance by the Lord Chancellor
and his Department and the Chair and Board of CAFCASS that their
roles in its establishment have been generally disastrous and
damaging to the children for whose benefit it was created. It
is now too late to go back and start again but one hopes lessons
will have been learned and that the Lord Chancellor and his Department
will in future consult more widely, pay heed to the results of
such consultations, and proceed with less haste and more care
and planning.
14. Lest it be thought that these criticisms
are being made with the benefit of hindsight I should point out
that concerns were being expressed about the proposed reforms
long before the creation of CAFCASS. To give but one example;
at the Second National Convention of Family Court Business Committees
/ Fora Representatives in November 1998 following a presentation
by Mr Arran Poyser on the consultation paper on the future of
the Court Welfare Services, which led up to the foundation of
CAFCASS, concern was expressed "about a deterioration of
the Court Welfare Service's effectiveness" and it was pointed
out that "extra money would need to be available for the
current Court Welfare Service to provide an effective service".
Regrettably the Lord Chancellor's Department with its characteristic
blend of arrogance and ignorance thought it knew best. Experience
has shown, not for the first time, that it did not.
His Honour Judge Bryant, Designated Family Judge
Teeside Combined Court Centre
March 2003
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