Written evidence submitted by Robert Whitson,
Chairman, ManKind (CAF 53)
COMMITTEE INQUIRY
INTO CAFCASS
ManKind is a men's and fathers' civil rights
charity. It is a national organisation dedicated to gaining parity
for men in all sectors of social endeavour and securing equality
of opportunity and treatment for men where they are presently
excluded or discriminated against.
Our mission is, therefore, to highlight all
discrimination against men in order to encourage those with power
and influence to make society a better and fairer place for everyone.
ManKind supports gender equality. But we support
gender equality in all facets of life—not just those in
which women have been discriminated against.
In particular, we campaign against discrimination
in the following areas:-
THE AUTHOR
The author of this paper, Robert Whiston, has
been Chairman of ManKind for a number of years and one of its
principle researchers. He stepped down as Chairman on 1 March,
2003.
He has a considerable number of year's experience
working in the manufacturing, retail and service sectors of the
economy. During his long business career he has been asked to
devise both "business recovery" and "company profitability"
strategies.
Frequently this has required a fundamental re-appraisal
of staff, staff competence, re-training, product knowledge and
product quality enhancement.
This has brought him face to face with both
ailing and profitable companies and he is therefore almost uniquely
placed to comment of the present condition of CAFCASS
Robert Whiston has written widely on a number
of social policy issues ranging from the CSA and the NHS to the
Probation Service and Prison reform.
He provides statistics and research data to
the media and many specialist authors on a regular basis. His
contributions in the form of statistical analysis can be found
in "Family Matters", House of Lord and Commons
Family Group (1998), "The Sex-Change Society",
Melanie Phillips (1999), "The Cost of Family Breakdown",
David Lindsay (2000) and increasingly on various website.
More recently, in response to a request from
the Rape Sentencing Panel in 2002, he completed an extensive review
of the sentencing policies of Western and Eastern Europe, Russia
and North America. This was subsequent to a wide ranging report
"When Justice Collides with Science" for the
Sex Offences Review Team in 1999.
He is currently a member of the Public Service
Agreement 8 (PSA 8) Safety Group, a specialist group meeting at
the Lord Chancellor's Dept to work out ways of increasing contact
between children and fathers.
He is also a member of the BBC's Internal Steering
Group piloting the "Hitting Home" campaign about
domestic violence for the BBC.
After his divorce Robert spent more than 10
years as a single parent while still working full-time. Both of
his children are now in their mid-20's so he is ideally situated
to comment on the failings of courts and professionals and what
works with children going through their adolescent years.
During that time he has advised and counselled
many fathers who are facing, quite unexpectedly and for the first
time, a court regime that is unsympathetic to the general understanding
of fair play.
In February 2003 he was made a fellow for the
Royal Society of Arts.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CAFCASS was a direct replacement for the Court
Welfare Officer regime that had been operated for many years by
Probation Service of the Home Office.
It was a discredited system and had to be finally
toppled by many groups, principally fathers and grandparents,
working in unison.
Staff of the Court Welfare service was never
appropriately trained for "normal" families. Their primary
focus and remit was troubled criminal families at the very margins
of "decent society". Their career structure took them
first into the criminal side from where they could later migrate
to family court work.
Despite assertions to the contrary CAFCASS has
so far proved to be a re-badging exercise.
It still does not have staff that are trained
primarily in child matters.
It still does not have staff that are trained
primarily in family matters.
On the visible "court room side" there
is confusion and poor standards eg CAFCASS/CWO reports badly trained
judges.
On the invisible "judicial side" there
is rampant ineptitude, mismanagement of committees and a disintegration
of services that were designed to back up and advise judges and
courts.
These are not merely the views of a minority interest
but assessments endorsed by various consultation paper, eg "Promoting
Inter-Agency Working in the Family Justice System Consultation
Paper", LCD (March 2002 Code CO 04/02).
If nothing else we are, or should be, concerned
with children—nor how pleasant or receptive or sensitive
CAFCASS staff were or how friendly we view court procedures or
how we think were treated by courts. These are all mere "processes"
and measuring them gives us only subjective customer satisfaction
indices. Our prime function should be objective and address
the "outcomes".
The fact that the Dept of Health torpedoed
the Children Act 1989 at its launch and the fact that little has
really changed following the Children Act for children and parents
after a divorce is to be lamented. The situation will only change
when the directive sent out to courts by the Dept of Health (John
Bowis) is publicised.
Journalist Margarette Driscoll, Sunday Times,
February 17, 2002, and others have highlighted the need and the
attraction of "shared parenting"—a concept still
alien to CAFCASS staff, the LCD and judges alike.
Judicial opinion is slowly shifting towards
a more receptive approach to Shared Parenting as the enunciated
but obviously unworkable model of "Residence and Contact"
can no longer be ignored.
Judges concede that the present residence and
contact system is not able to care for the most vulnerable when
marriages break up and point to the present failings of CAFCASS.
Children whose parents are going through a difficult separation
or divorce have a tough time. The support element of CAFCASS is
absent.
CAFCASS officers are unaware of this option
in the Children Act and never recommend it to the court. No region
now promotes it, though five years before the Children Act (circa
1986) it was not uncommon. They have no research facility and
officers surveyed see no need to be kept up to date. This underlines
the generally perceived incompetence of CAFCASS.
Launched only two years ago, CAFCASS brought
together guardians ad litem, the court welfare service and the
children's branch of the Official Solicitor's department under
one roof responsible to and funded by the Lord Chancellor's Department,
it is already viewed by some as on the brink of collapse.
CAFCASS must be given the resources to offer
a properly effective system to protect children.
In concert with CAFCASS, our priority must be
to inform and educate parents about the consequences of their
breakdown in relationship, to help them to make appropriate parenting
arrangements.
CAFCASS, though not above criticism, is vital
in this process. ManKind is disappointed that its positive suggestions
and recommendations have so comprehensively been sidelined. Mediating
between couples is a role full of potential and open for CAFCASS
to commandeer.
So desperate has the situation become in the
last decade that ManKind working with other similar groups have
gone so far as to present the infant CAFCASS with skeleton manuals
and working documents ready for them to fine tune and then distribute.
Fundamentally the great flaw is the lack of
commonly agreed standards and any national standard of service.
There is, for instance, no national Training Manual or complaints
procedure—both are examples for which we produced skeleton
manuals.
The Lord Chancellor's Department has respond
to the recommendations made in Making Contact Work with
the creation of PSA 8 which, as a matter of priority, is seeking
to enlarge the quantum of time fathers spend, or are allowed to
have, with their children after divorce. As presently conceived
this amounts to "licensing" by the state.
While fathers' groups are pushing hard for justice,
human rights and courts to enforce contact, women's groups are
resisting what they see as an assault on their citadel—the
monopoly of custody. In this struggle for a father's human rights,
the red herring of "not properly take domestic violence into
account" has been much in evidence.
Women groups, in general, are "in denial"
on two fronts. Firstly, that children need their father as much
as their mothers and that it unrealistic to feign agreement but
then block greater contact. Secondly, that if abuse is to dominate
discussions then the amount of abuse directed by mothers at children
is far greater than that by fathers. These appear two uncomfortable
facts that women (and policy makers) will have to absorb sooner
or later.
CAFCASS officers meet some very bitter and distressed
parents—mothers and fathers. Indeed, ManKind and all other
men's and fathers' groups meet a goodly number of distressed parents.
They, and we, expect of CAFCASS officers that their professional
assessment should override personal choice or preferences. However,
this is not apparent in very many cases that we are involved with,
either directly or indirectly.
In too many cases the resident parent's view
(the mother) and not that of the child or non-resident parent
view is preferred.
When this bias is gross the bitterness becomes
not only on-going but negative and debilitating to the whole relationship
between the parents and children. Having to choose means the winner
takes all.
It is at this point, we believe, that parental
alienation syndrome (PAS) sets in.
The knowledge that children can be used as leverage
in residence and contact scenarios only encourages them to be
used as such with all the attendant damage that induces.
Seasoned CAFCASS managers argue this probably
does more damage to the child than anything else including the
divorce and therefore CAFCASS's role should be to broker shared
parenting (not "contact") where there is no winner-takes-all
scenario.
Consumer research shows those parents view CAFCASS
practitioners (Court Reporters) in terms of court order outcomes.
If the order is in favour of a parent's application, that parent
thinks CAFCASS are professional, objective and helpful. If, however,
the order is not in a parent's favour, CAFCASS is perceived as
unprofessional, biased and unhelpful.
At least 50%, ie mothers, are therefore always
happy with CAFCASS and 50% (fathers) are therefore always unhappy
with CAFCASS. This is a view borne out in "Families in Conflict,
Perspectives of Children and Parents on the Family Court Welfare
Service", Buchanan, Hunt, Bretherton & Bream (2001).
(Only the Executive Summary of this submission
has been printed. A copy of the memorandum has been placed
in the House of Commons Library, where it may be inspected by
Members. Copies are also available to the public for inspection
from the Record Office, House of Lords)
Robert Whitson
Chairman ManKind
March 2003
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