Nagalro disputes Cafcass's claims on waiting list figures
Nagalro, the Professional Association for Children’s Guardians, Family Court Advisers and Independent Social Work Practitioners, has strongly criticised Cafcass's official statistics indicating a fall in waiting lists as inaccurate and claimed that they hide the extent of the service's backlog.
The organisation has cited claims on Radio 4's File on Four programme broadcast on Wednesday 24th February, that Cafcass was removing cases from its waiting list as soon as they were allocated to a case manager, regardless of whether the manager had the capacity to handle the case or not. In many cases, the programme reported, the children concerned will not be seen and will not receive the proactive service necessary to protect them.
Nagalro said that some managers have up to 20 public law cases and over 100 private law cases allocated to them in areas where there are long waiting lists, or where inspections by Ofsted are due. File on Four reported that cases are being allocated in bulk to managers, and also to practitioners who have no time to do work on them.
Ann Haigh, Chair of Nagalro, said: “It is particularly worrying if we cannot trust the figures Cafcass produces about how many children are waiting for a service. How can the Cafcass Board and government ministers be sure they know the true numbers of children who are waiting?
However, Cafcass has strongly rejected Nagalro's accusations. In a statement to Local Government Lawyer, its chief executive Anthony Douglas said: “We are disappointed that Nagalro has chosen to recycle inaccurate claims regarding the veracity of Cafcass’ statistics. Our statistics are drawn from our Case Management System, which has been in operation since 2005, and are audited by the National Audit Office via our Annual Report. That our care figures have the status of official statistics is a matter of public record and we strongly dispute claims that our figures are inaccurate.
“Our focus at this time of increased pressure for us all in the Family Justice System is to work with our partners to find innovative and safe solutions to the challenges that we must together face. We will not improve outcomes for children by attacking each other and we would urge Nagalro to work with us collaboratively in responding to the unprecedented challenges facing us all.”
