MR HARRY FLETCHER, MS FIONA ROBERTS MS LIZ MOXHAM

TUESDAY 29 APRIL 2003

  136. Welcome. We are very pleased to have you helping us with this inquiry into CAFCASS, Mr Fletcher, Ms Roberts and another witness who Mr Fletcher is going to introduce to us!

  (Mr Fletcher) My third witness is Liz Moxham, who is Chair of NAPO's Family Court Committee and she is also a practitioner in Greater Manchester. Fiona Roberts is Vice-Chair nationally of NAPO and is also a practitioner in Brighton.

  137. Welcome to all of you. A number of our witnesses—and you will have heard, perhaps, a little of this in the previous session but it has happened in a number of sessions—have referred to the rather centralised nature of CAFCASS. Many of those witnesses come from the background of professional services which were not so centralised. That is presumably less true for your members. Do you share the view that there are dangers that CAFCASS can be over-centralised and over-managed, or do you see it from a different perspective?
  (Mr Fletcher) Possibly, if I could start. NAPO certainly supports strong and effective management. We have a comparatively large centre, 60-plus personnel, but the last two to three years for us have been characterised by fairly poor communication from the centre to us and poor communication within the headquarters. Also, as our evidence shows, there has been a consistent failure to deliver—good promises and good intent (I have to say that) but a consistent failure to deliver on a range of issues, including training and recruitment (issues that have been referred to in the last session), diversity (crucial importance), recruitment and IT. My colleague Fiona Roberts is going to develop some of her experiences. Fiona has been involved in negotiating with CAFCASS centrally over the last couple of years and would air some of the frustrations that she has experienced during that period.
  (Ms Roberts) I think our experience of CAFCASS management has been very mixed. We are sure that there are some very good managers who fully understand the need for consultation with trade unions, with staff and communicate well. We feel there are other managers who are less committed to the consultation process, and one of the frustrating things we have found is that not all the management seems be singing from the same hymn sheet. There have been a lot of temporary staff who have come and gone, and also the different headquarter teams: there is an operations team, there is a finance team, there is a legal team and there is a human relations team. Sometimes you will ask a question and you will simultaneously get two contradictory answers from two of the teams. Likewise, there is central management and then there is regional management in Wales and the nine English regions, and sometimes when you are negotiating nationally about an issue it is suggested that it would be more appropriate to discuss that issue on a regional basis, and you will go to regional negotiations and be told "That needs to be negotiated nationally", so things get batted backwards and forwards, and that is frustrating. So I think there is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of communication between the levels of management and, also, between the different management departments within CAFCASS.

  138. You hinted in your submission that the preoccupation they had had with the dispute they did not resolve in the end with self-employed guardians had left them with insufficient time and attention to deal with relations with your own members.
  (Ms Roberts) I think that is very much history now. That does feel like quite a long time ago. It has left a bitter residue for people who have already given evidence, I think, but it does not appear to be interfering now with management systems in CAFCASS.

  139. Why do you think your members have been experiencing difficulties in liaising with other agencies?
  (Mr Fletcher) If I could answer that one. I did a study on behalf of members in CAFCASS last summer which involved 60 members of staff and looking at the five most recent cases from each member of staff, which gave me 200 altogether. The majority, I have to say—over 200—did not experience difficulties with other agencies, but one-third did. I think the main complaints were about the medical profession, particularly psychiatrists, who were reluctant to pass on critical information because of patient confidentiality or fears about contravening the Data Protection or Human Rights' Acts. That experience was replicated with other agencies including the Probation Service, of course, of which we were once part, and domestic violence units and the police. There was a common theme which came through it, which was a feeling that they would break rules of confidentiality if that information was given out. There were two or three occasions which bemused me where GPs demanded fees before they were willing to pass information on about patients. Also, there were instances in domestic violence units where the police and the authorities thought that the permission of the third party—ie the alleged perpetrator—was necessary before that information could be passed on. Clearly, those caused concern. The way out of it, I think, is for CAFCASS (and maybe they are doing this) to start to develop national protocols with these agencies so that these problems do not occur in the future.
  (Ms Moxham) I would also like to chip in there. Just on a local level, I think in respect of communication and liaison between agencies there is a difficulty in that there is still a significant number of agencies that do not have a good understanding of what CAFCASS is—or, indeed, what it even stands for. It is still not uncommon to go to a meeting and say who you are, where you come from and who you are representing and then have people say "What's that?", and you have to launch into a full explanation. I think that is a profile issue for CAFCASS. Just as an example, I sit as a practitioner on my local domestic violence forum, which I have a particular interest in, but I have to spend a lot of time building up other members of that forum's understanding of what my job is and my commitment, also, to the prevention of domestic violence and ensuring that children are safe within their families, in respect of contact. That profiling helps in terms of, obviously, agencies' willingness to share information with us if they perceive that that is going to be used to good purpose and for the safeguarding of women and children in the example that I have given, and they are more likely to elaborate and share more useful information. I think there is a national issue which is about the protocols that need to exist so agencies are very clear about where they come from, and there is a local issue which is about profile and liaison and just having a good understanding of how we work togther to safeguard and improve the interests of children.