Ofsted slams Cafcass in Greater London as "inadequate"
Ofsted has published a damning report into the performance of Cafcass in Greater London, labelling the service area’s overall effectiveness as “inadequate” and describing some of its partnerships with local authorities as under-developed.
The inspectorate acknowledged that the area had taken “some recent creative steps to tackle delay”, but added that it was too early to say if these would show sufficient impact. “This means that children and families are still waiting too long to receive a services from Cafcass,” it said.
The service area covers all 33 local authorities in Greater London and Ofsted described its engagement with services users as “very weak”, with assessments not shared consistently with children and families. Other problems include:
- Poor practice overall in equality and diversity, despite the provision of some good training
- Actions identified through equality impact assessments are not being implemented effectively
- Improvement in overall performance is slow, although the work of quality improvement managers is strong
- Management information is often out of date or inaccurate, with few performance targets met
- Complaints handling and the contribution by Cafcass to the promotion of improved outcomes for children and young people are inadequate.
The inspectors did, however, praise the area’s leadership style as “strong and purposeful”, with minimum standards for service delivery to children and families “mostly met”.
Most case records are sound and the majority of reports to court are satisfactory or better, Ofsted suggested, while safeguarding is satisfactory overall. However, it added: “Cafcass safeguarding policies do not cover fully some of the specialist services provided to High Court cases such as those involving child abduction. At times the understanding between the service area and the court about the management of cases lacks clarity, which then puts pressure on the finite resources available to Cafcass.”
The inspectors also praised the direct work with children and young people as “mostly strong”, and “in many cases effective advocacy is provided for them in both public and private law cases”.
The Ofsted report described the service area’s capacity to improve as satisfactory, with managers making well thought out strategic changes. “Through a multi-dimensional approach and a better understanding of the range of factors contributing to delay, management strategies are beginning to reduce the amount of time that children and families wait before they receive a service from Cafcass,” it said.
Ofsted warned that some local authority partnerships are underdeveloped at a practice level, although they are satisfactory at a strategic level.
The report identified a number of actions that should be taken to improve Cafcass’ performance in Greater London. These include ensuring immediately that performance management information is accurate and timely and performance improvement tools are used consistently.
Within three months, Ofsted added, the area should ensure that strategic partnership working is effective across all courts and that case plans and recommendations to court are shared with children and families appropriately and in a timely manner.
Cafcass and NAPO recently agreed to hold talks in the face of potential industrial action over excessive caseloads. The union’s leadership has also claimed that local authorities are too quick to bring care proceedings.
