Change of residency

Dear Sir or Madam,

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please could you advise, how many children across the country have
in the past 5 years been removed from the care of their resident
parent and residency given to the non-resident parent due to
Cafcass suggesting that resident parent is either hostile to
contact and/or not promoting contact. Could you please indicate how
many of such cases involved the resident parent not giving contact
at all, how many cases are such that where contact is given the
children are not settled and distressed. Could you also indicate in
how many of these cases did the resident parent raise issues of
domestic abuse and/or child abuse.

Please also indicate, how many of the cases where residency is
moved that the resident parent raised a complaint about the Cafcass
officer. Please show where a FCA is involved and where a Guardian
Ad Litem is involved.

The format that I'd envisaged to be easiest would be:

No of cases where residency was shifted to non-resident parent,
breaking it by region of Cafcass/contact given/children distressed
and not settled/domestic abuse/abuse of children/FCA or
Guardian/year decision made

Dear Bower, Hannah,

Thank you for your prompt response. I understand from your response
that you do have the information that I have requested and will
only release it if I give you a reason for seeking that
information. I was not aware that I had to give a reason for making
a FOI request.

It might help if you could give me some reasons as to why 'my
intentions' or 'reasons' for making the FOI request are important,
and what reasons might affect your position in releasing the
information.

I hope this helps. I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Janeja

Dear Bower, Hannah,

I am writing to inform you that you, Cafass, are overdue with the
Freedom of Information Act Request made. By law, under the Freedom
of Information Act you should have replied by now, and in not doing
so you are acting unlawfully.

Yours sincerely,

Janeja

Dear Jassal, Jasvinder,

Thank you for the response dated 10th December 2008. I must remind
you that this response is out of time as per the FOI Act.

I would like the data sent to this public forum as you have agreed
to disclose it and I believe that as an organisation you have seen
that such information is valuable to share with the public. As such
responding as you have done with your response dated 10th December
2008 is the best way forward.

You say that you cannot give the information as you can "only
obtain this information from our Case Management System, which has
been in place as a national system since April 2007, so we could
not go beyond this date." This is absolutely okay as if you gave
data since April 2007 then that would be okay too.

You then say:
"Information around the Cafcass recommendation is not a mandatory
field and therefore is not entered for all cases." and "We only
record what the outcome of the case is and not the reasons for the
outcome." - to me this is not true. I am sure that there is a
mechanism be it manual by which you as an agency trusted by the
government to 'safeguard the children's best interests" would have
such data recorded. If it is as you say then there as major
implications on the welfare of the children that you are set-up to
protect and be the voice for. You would be deemed to have failed
them, and as such violated their human rights and indeed acted
criminally. I do not wish to view the implications and as such am
confident that Cafcass does record recommendations, outcomes and
reasons for outcomes, how else would you measure success and how
best you have safeguarded the children?

Furthermore, you state:
"Safeguarding issues have been recorded on CMS only from June 2008"
- how else have you recorded prior to June 2008? Can you share
prior to June 2008's data?

Might I say that your response is very concerning as your response
indicates major failings of a very large public authority whose
primary function is to safeguard the children's best interests.

Under Working together to safeguard children (HM
Government, 2006) and associated regulations, Local
Safeguarding Children Boards are required to undertake
reviews of serious cases. The purpose of serious case
reviews is to:

1) establish whether there are lessons to be learnt from the case
about the way in which local professionals and organisations work
together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children

2) identify clearly what those lessons are, how they will be acted
on and what is expected to change as a result

3) as a consequence, improve inter-agency working and better
safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

Serious case reviews are not enquiries into how a child dies or who
is culpable. That is a matter for coroners and criminal courts,
respectively, to determine as appropriate.

Hence your response indicates that Cafcass are not able to meet the
requirements of Working together to safeguard children (HM
Government, 2006)

If you do have the data and it is held manually or in any other
system or format and need more time to collate manual data then
that's fine, though do let me now of your intentions.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours sincerely,

Janeja