Cafcass & Actual Case Outcomes
Since 2001 Cafcass has operated under the dual premises (i) that every case is different and (ii) the level of contact is not a child-welfare issue.
Under this regime, where almost any recommendation can be made on almost any facts, there is no perceived need for Cafcass to know what it does. All recommendations, irrespective, are in the child’s best interests by definition, and no outcome in any one case has a bearing on any other case: every case is different.
From this standpoint, there is no point in keeping records. Case-outcomes have nothing to teach us and everything is for the best anyway. Plus, Cafcass’ official take is that the outcome of the case (which deals in throwaways - like whether parents can see their children) does not matter: the true index of Cafcass’ worth is the unquantifiable extent to which it made parents ‘think’ differently.
In this spirit, Cafcass has no consolidated records of what it recommended or why.
However, the question of what Cafcass has actually done to parents and children over the years, under the banner of ‘the child’s best interests’, can be approached from the other end. Case-outcomes closely reflect Cafcass’ recommendations.
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Cafcass: the Only Known Research on Case Outcomes
Nineteen years after the 1989 Act the Ministry of Justice published an analysis of a random 308 cases from the previous half-million Section 8 proceedings (‘Outcomes of Applications to Court for Contact Orders after parental separation or Divorce’ Joan Hunt and Alison Macleod, 2008).
In default of further and better information, this is all we have (page 13):
4% of all cases: no contact whatever
the next 21%: only indirect or supervised contact
the next 20% (or thereabouts) - very little face-to-face contact
The parents in the last cohort (with no overnight contact) on average achieved 20.6 hours p.c.m.: five hours a week, or a 97:3 apportionment (page 26).
Benefit of the Child: in Practice
These are the outcomes to which the label of ‘the child’s best interests’ is applied.
That is, 25% of applicants do not secure permission to be alone with their own children, and some or most of the next 20% achieve very little contact indeed. Taken these categories together, something approaching 45% of parents do not attain worthwhile contact in the first year of legal labour.
However, this is to guild the lilly.
The order - made say one year after separation - will remain in force until it is superseded by another order - and it typically takes a year before a case can be brought back to court.
So the actuality is that approaching 45% of parents do not attain worthwhile contact in the first two years.
By that stage, the ‘trajectory’ of the case will be virtually flat; the status quo will apply; and efforts to attain significant uplift in year three are likely to fail - on the basis that there there has been very little contact for the first two years. This prognosis, and the law of diminishing returns, is clear to parents but not to policy-makers. After a first “let’s-continue-as-we-are order” in year one, some of most of these children are headed for child-parent severance.
This is the best available ‘tell’ on how the ‘best interests of the child’ is interpreted. It is how the policy of ‘our guidance is, there is no guidance’ works on the ground. This policy has not changed since this 2008 research was conducted. There is no reason to suppose that case-outcomes have changed.
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Cafcass: the Dead Hand
A smattering of other figures point the same way, but worse. From the Hunt report at page 4: “Much was made, in the House of Lords debate on the Children and Adoption Bill, of a piece of research by the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), which found that 5.2% of cases ended with an order for no contact; 8.2% in indirect contact only and 5.7% in supervised contact. Even higher proportions are reported in another study (Buchanan et al, 2001), where 36% ended in indirect or no contact.”
The Hunt research also noted that “in the majority” of Section 8 applications “there was no face to face [contact] at the outset”(p17). Cafcass’ position at the 2019 Family Justice Review (PrLWG1, para 25) was that Cafcass should ‘guard against’ providing these parents with guidance: according to Cafcass, if the almost certain loss of a child / parent is the only issue, no child-welfare issue is involved.
What Parents Want
Table 2.12 of the Hut research presents a snapshot of how things stand at the start of legal proceedings in 266 random cases. The figures are:
(i) 36% of resident parents (i.e. 95 out of 266) want either no contact at all or no line-of-sight contact
(ii) another 14% (i.e. 39 out of 266) would accept direct contact - provided it was supervised
On this sample, half of all resident parents opposed all significant contact: either absolutely all contact, or any contact that extends beyond periodic letters / postcards / emails / phone calls.
On these figures, that is the caseload walking into the courts twenty thousand times a year. Other than telling them not to argue, Cafcass is not in a position to advise any of these parents on what to do for the best - either during the period before proceedings are issued, or during the period after the proceedings were issued (until the moment the Cafcass one-off report is produced, typically shortly before the hearing itself).
The nature of Cafcass’ general throughput is considered in more detail at Cafcass’s Actual Caseload.