Industrial action looms at Cafcass as child care applications soar

November 25, 2009

The possibility of industrial action at the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (Cafcass) is growing more likely by the day, after union leaders warned that staff are facing excessively high workloads.

According to union Napo, children are also suffering because the sharp rise in care applications had left the child protection body overstretched.

The union told the BBC this week that hundreds of children were still waiting for Cafcass to appoint a guardian to represent their interests in court. Caseloads have virtually doubled for some frontline staff following the Baby Peter case, it said.

Napo assistant general secretary Harry Fletcher claimed children were receiving a deteriorating service.

"I think it's inevitable that children must suffer if staff have 20 cases or more instead of 12 which they had a year or so ago,” he said. "If care cases aren't being allocated because there are insufficient guardians, therefore nobody is representing the child in legal proceedings, then clearly children must be suffering, both emotionally and psychologically."

The union says that some staff had been forced to take time off due to the stress of handling mounting caseloads.

Cafcass has acknowledged that it is experiencing a huge increase in its workload. Last month it published care statistics for the second quarter of 2009-10 which showed that care demand was up 47% on the same quarter last year. The figure for June 2009 was the highest ever recorded for a single month since the agency first start compiling the data.

Vince Clark, its operational director, meanwhile denied that children are suffering as a result of the current crisis. “We are putting together proposals to ensure that, despite the increase in work, all children are receiving the set safe minimum service,” he told the BBC.

The union's findings were contained in a briefing paper Cafcass in Crisis, prepared for MPs and seen by the BBC. The union has announced that the situation has reached the stage where staff are considering industrial action.