Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-440)
18 JANUARY 2005
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
AND RT
HON MARGARET
HODGE MBE, MP
Q420 Chairman: We have it. We were anxious
to know whether there is going to be progress because people come
to their MPs wanting to reveal that they have been badly treated
in court, but the evidence for that we ought not to see and we
are not allowed to bring to you, as the Solicitor General discovered
to her cost.
Margaret Hodge: It is not just
an issue for MPs, it is an issue for Citizens Advice workers,
trade unions, etc. It could be a whole range of people that you
go to for further advice after you have been through the courts.
We have put the consultation paper out. Once we have got a response
to that we will make the necessary changes. We want to work very
speedily on that.
Q421 Peter Bottomley: Can we just make
clear that at the moment there is no inhibition on someone talking
to a Member of Parliament, it is actually disclosing information
that is linked to the court?
Margaret Hodge: I do not know
the answer to that. Do you want me to write to you on that?
Q422 Chairman: I think it might be wiser
for you to write to us. My suspicion is that the party giving
information might be at risk of contempt of court.
Margaret Hodge: Just in terms
of timeframe, we want to have the changes in place by the summer
of this year, but we do need to have a proper consultation on
it.
Q423 Keith Vaz: What operational benefits
have been obtained by the transfer of CAFCASS from the Lord Chancellor's
Department to the Department for Education?
Margaret Hodge: I think the Committee
did an extremely thorough bit of work, which I took very seriously
when I first got this job, on the way in which that transfer[2]had
not been handled very well. I think we all recognise that in its
initial stages the creation of CAFCASS was not a success for children
or families. I hope the Committee agrees that the concept is an
appropriate concept and we want to make the concept work. I hope
that the steps we have taken and will continue to take to get
an effective service that properly meets the needs of children
and their parents are right. I think I have now put the proper
building blocks in place. What I have always said is you cannot
turn round the performance of an organisation overnight. The new
chief executive started in September. He is undertaking pretty
radical management changes and restructuring throughout his organisation.
Q424 Keith Vaz: How often would you meet
with the chairman and chief executive of CAFCASS?
Margaret Hodge: When I had direct
responsibility for this I would meet the chairman pretty often
and the chief executive at least quarterly. Geoff Filkin undertakes
some of those regular meetings on my behalf. We are about to go
and meet and talk to the new board in the not too distant future
now they have settled in.
Q425 Keith Vaz: What is morale like in
CAFCASS?
Margaret Hodge: Much, much better.
Q426 Keith Vaz: Obviously they saw the
report the Committee had published and you have taken over. Are
they leaving the service? Are they joining the service? What are
the numbers?
Margaret Hodge: The numbers are
up. The figures I have are slightly out-of-date as these figures
always are, but there has been an increase in numbers. Most importantly,
there has been an increase in full-time staff, which is where
we want to get it. The other thing is the self-employed practitioners
where there were particular problems. There has been an increase
in the number of self-employed practitioners who are now working
with CAFCASS. I know you had evidence from both the chair and
the chief executive. They are completely committed to trying to
ensure that they get high quality, properly trained staff with
the proper competencies in place as soon as possible, but, having
said that, there are still regional difficulties.
Q427 Keith Vaz: Which is the worst region?
Margaret Hodge: It is probably
London.
Q428 Keith Vaz: Is it a recruitment problem?
Margaret Hodge: Yes. We are all
fishing in the same pool, the social services department and some
of the new organisations that we have established. So the answer
has to be partly about increasing the number of people who enter
social work.
Q429 Keith Vaz: Earlier in your evidence
you talked about funding and you gave us some figures for 2004-05.
Is there going to be an increase next year?
Margaret Hodge: There will an
inflationary increase.[3]
It was £12 million extra we gave them, which is a pretty
substantial increase in their budget. I want to see that working
properly. You have to give that time to work. The answer is not
just money.
Q430 Keith Vaz: One of the problems is
that if you do not have enough CAFCASS officials then the reports
do not come out and that adds to the delay in the system. Is there
any knock-on effect of the problems in CAFCASS, which obviously
are being addressed but there are still problems, to the courts
system?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We rely on having a good complement of CAFCASS staff. I am very,
very hopeful that the changes that Margaret has put in place and
the new board and new chief executive will make a great difference.
One of the critical changes which is being looked at is the way
in which CAFCASS operates and the move away from the lengthier
report, which may on some occasions be appropriate, to focusing
on the issues that need to be addressed and it is also about using
the CAFCASS resource more appropriately. So linked in to the changes
that we have got today and, of course, linked with the courts
is making sure that we use these very valuable, highly trained
specialists as appropriately as possible. If we get that right
then we will be able to use that resource better, which of itself
will make a huge difference to them and to their morale.
Q431 Keith Vaz: I think both of you coming
to give evidence to us today is great. There is a ministerial
committee meeting, is there not? As ministers you meet to discuss
these issues, do you?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We do.
Q432 Keith Vaz: How often?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Geoff Filkin and I meet regularly. We have a steering group which
deals specifically with the public law issues, because we have
a target around the 40 week expectation which includes all the
different organisations and it includes CAFCASS. Geoff and I are
considering whether we ought to incorporate into that some of
the issues around private law without moving off the track. Geoff
and I meet regularly, probably fortnightly to monthly depending
on diary commitments, to go through all the issues. This morning
before I came to the Committee we were talking about setting up
a group to consider how we take forward all of the proposals in
the Green Paper.
Q433 Keith Vaz: Obviously ministers will
meet. Where does the liaison kick in at official level?
Margaret Hodge: We have a sponsoring
group of officials in the DfES who have responsibility for CAFCASS
and they have very close links in with officials working in the
DCA. When we first looked at the CAFCASS problems I think we were
particularly concerned with the public law issues because these
are the most vulnerable children in our society and the delays
incurred there in simply not even allocating cases were horrendous.
I often laugh when we say we have the 40 week protocol because
40 weeks is a heck of a long time in a child's life and that must
not be the end of our ambitions. On the public law cases, in a
year, from November 2003 to November 2004, the number of unallocated
cases almost halved. There are still some unallocated cases and
there should not be. We still need to make further progress. We
are beginning to see those shoots and changes.
Q434 Keith Vaz: Are you satisfied that
they look at their report from the children's perspective? I do
not want to start this daddy stuff again, but fathers will say
to me that they write the reports biased in favour of mothers
and mothers say the same thing about fathers. Where is the vision
in this? Where is the ethos to ensure that it is the child's interest
that is paramount?
Margaret Hodge: The vision is
that the child's interest ought to be paramount and children's
voices should be a much stronger focus of all the work in this
arena. Does CAFCASS do it now? The best do and the training will
ensure that the best becomes the practicable.
Q435 Chairman: You have told us of the
progress CAFCASS is making and we are very interested in that
progress and pleased to see some of it has taken place, but there
are very serious criticisms that we had to make about it. You
are about to give CAFCASS a greatly enhanced responsibility that
is within its terms of reference, but it is a new area of work
given that at the moment they are unable to meet their targets
which themselves are somewhat unambitious.
Margaret Hodge: I agree. I had
concerns about that. As they were settling down in a reconfigured
organisation I had to be absolutely clear that they focus on priorities
and do not spread themselves too thinly. I accept that there is
a danger in what you say. I discussed that very, very openly with
both the chair and the chief executive of CAFCASS and told them
not to consent unless they felt able to take it on and I am sure
they said so in their evidence to you. They are taking it on cognisant
of the fact that we want priority to be given to sorting out the
organisation and, in particular, getting the support to children
in the public care system turned around as quickly and as effectively
as we can. I agree there is a danger there. I think the political
imperative was such that we had to try and run with the two things
together and we have to watch it very carefully.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I agree with everything Margaret says. When we were looking at
the courts side of it it was CAFCASS themselves who were saying
they spend too much of their time writing lengthy reports that
they perhaps do not need to do in all circumstances and that they
could offer a better service if they could have a more focused
approach to this and devote more of their time to working with
children and their families. In building this part of the work
round the Green Paper we were very much fitting in with where
CAFCASS felt professionally they would use their resources best
and I think it is a greater clarity of direction for the CAFCASS
staff which is very much welcomed by those I have met.
Q436 Chairman: Some of the ministerial
comments or possibly just briefings that the press have given
gave the impression this morning that CAFCASS is going to write
many fewer reports. When you look at the White Paper, it is much
more cautious language than that about "more focused reports".
Are you in a position to say CAFCASS will be able, as of a few
weeks' time, to drastically reduce the number of reports it writes
and the length of them?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
If one looks at what the President has said this morning in terms
of how the courts should operate, she describes the purpose of
the first hearing and how that CAFCASS should be doing to be much
more about focusing on the areas that need to be addressed rather
than the broader, lengthier report that covers all the issues.
If one puts that together with what we have been saying about
the role of CAFCASS, I think you find the two come together. What
we were not prepared to do was say to the judiciary they did not
need CAFCASS reports because that is clearly untrue. The judiciary
feel very strongly in some circumstances they might need lengthier
reports. It is not about getting in the way of that relationship
but being clear about the nub of it, which is getting to the issues
that need to be addressed in those reports.
Margaret Hodge: You are right,
as the Minister responsible for CAFCASS I do not want to promise
more than we can deliver and I have said as much very, very clearly
both to the chair and the chief executive of CAFCASS. I think
a bit of this is "Watch this space". We know the direction
of travel we want to go in, we know where we want to get to, but
we must not try to rush at something and then simply fail to deliver
in the way that CAFCASS has done in the past. So you are completely
correct to draw our attention to it.
Q437 Mr Dawson: We have seen the amendment
to the existing definition of "significant harm" and
the introduction of the Gateway process. Can you assure me that
accusations of domestic violence, which is a thing we would all
acknowledge is significantly under-reported and I think these
reforms are designed to address that, will not be ignored when
people do not initially make complaints at the Gateway stage?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I certainly would want to reassure you about that. What we are
trying to do is to develop a systematic way in which we approach
this, a process that from the beginning enables those who might
be victims of domestic violence to bring that forward. We know
from experience that those who suffer domestic violence sometimes
do not know that they are even victims of domestic violence, it
is how they live. There is an enormous reluctance on the part
of the victims, for all sorts of reasons which I am sure the Committee
is fully aware of and certainly I know Mr Dawson is, to come forward
and use that and it is to do with being a victim and all that
that brings with it and feeling it is your fault and guilt and
so on. We want to make absolutely sure that where it could be
a factor it is enabled to be raised at the beginning and throughout
the process and that where it is raised the court makes a finding
of fact looking at the evidence that might be available to the
court to determine whether or not it is a factor and then, where
it is a factor, it should be clear about the definition of harm
and what the implications would be of that in terms of contact
with the child.
Q438 Mr Dawson: Will there be a stage
before any enforcement is applied where the possibility of domestic
violence and/or child abuse is very closely looked into?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Indeed. It would be failing the children if those allegations
were not looked into. What we want to do is to make sure, wherever
possible, those issues are addressed before we got to the point
of a contact order being made rather than having the order made
and then the parent who has residency rights saying they are not
allowing that child to go because the person is violent, which
in a sense would have to be looked into. We want to try and get
those issues addressed early in the process. I think that is a
critical point.
Q439 Mr Dawson: There are people who
e-mail me almost on a daily business to tell me that accusations
of domestic violence are frequently false. Is there any truth
in that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We do not have any statistics about unfounded allegations because
as they are unfounded they are not pursued. Where they are made
then the courts have a responsibility to make a finding of fact
and to get the evidence as to whether to support that claim or
not. Occasionally it is one word against another and the court
has to use, as Margaret was saying earlier, its best judgment
in those circumstances, but where you have children, it is also
an opportunity for the CAFCASS officer or others involved with
the child to determine whether those allegations are correct as
well. That is the process. We think that is the right process.
It works well. It enables us to rule out the unfounded allegations
by looking for fact, but it also makes sure that the bigger problem
of victims not coming forward is enabled to happen more often.
Q440 Mr Dawson: Would it be helpful for
the Government to study perhaps when the Gateway process gets
underway not only the number of complaints of domestic violence
but also how many of those complaints are found to be proved?
That seems to be an important piece of research.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
One of the interesting aspects whenever a Select Committee does
a piece of work is that one finds out what one does not know and
certainly I would say to the Committee that one of the helpful
things that has happened is that we need to think very carefully
about the kind of statistics we collect and the sort of information
we need without burdening, as you will appreciate, CAFCASS, the
courts or others and it might well that be the Gateway process
in a sense enables us to do that. We need, if nothing else, to
see whether it works.
Chairman: Thank you both for the full
and frank evidence you have given us this morning. These are important
issues in the lives of many children and families. We will report
on them shortly. Since you have quite a good track record of taking
notice of our serious recommendations, as in the case of CAFCASS,
we trust that you will do so on this occasion.
2 Note by witness: The Minister was referring
to CAFCASS' creation rather than the transfer from DCA to DfES Back
3
Note by witness: This is incorrect-there will not be a
further inflationary increase in 2005-06. In 2004-05, CAFCASS
was allocated a budget of £107 million, which represented
a £12 million increase to its 2003-04 budget, in order to
enable CAFCASS' backlog of unallocated cases to be cleared. It
has now been decided to sustain this increase into 2005-06. The
budget of £107 million represents a 12.6% increase over the
period 2003-04 (£95 million) to 2005-06 (£107 million) Back
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