CAFCASS have now inserted disability in their principle underlying private law: Negative Impact assesment

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service,

CAFCASS have now included disability in their principle underlying private law making it visible where it was previous invisible and excluded:

1. Please provide the information regarding any action CAFCASS propose to undertake an impact assessment to identify how many families and children were directly affected by the negative impact of disability previous invisible to CAFCASS both in principle and practice

2. What date did CAFCASS insert disability into their principle: anti discriminatory practice

Yours faithfully,

[Name Removed]

Governance, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

1 Attachment

Dear Ms Soeder,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

Cafcass will not be conducting an impact assessment to identify how many
families and children were directly affected by the negative impact of
disability not being included within the  Underlying principles of a
Cafcass private law assessment. The characteristic of disability was not
intended to be excluded from the document. The framework is and its
supporting documentation is being treated as a living document and will be
updates in line with practice and research developments, and as with all
our policies and practice guidance, we will undertake an annual review and
make adjustments as appropriate.  The CIAF is due to be reviewed by the
National Improvement Service in the coming months.

 

The Underlying principles of a Cafcass private law assessment document was
updated on 24 September 2019 to include ‘disability’ under the
Anti-discriminatory practice section.

 

Kind regards,

 

Governance Team | Cafcass

* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk 

[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email

 

 

 

 

 

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Dear Governance,

CAFCASS May not have intended to omit disability but they did. Had you said this when I first raised this with CAFCASS then your justification could be accepted however you did not simply say that but instead considered my original FOIA referencing exclusion of disability to be vexatious which is perverse. I had to request internal review and challenge CAFCASS to simply acknowledge the omission referencing House of Lords debates. Added to this is the outstanding matter of the PCP: All adult behaviour which is indirect discrimination which in practice leads to direct discrimination.

This evidently had the effect of CAFCASS FCA’s and CAFCASS staff not being inclusive of disability or regarding it as a protected characteristic. There is a cumulative picture as well as impact in real terms where FCA’s, managers and staff throughout CAFCASS disregard disability in real terms. Your frontline staff exclude disability and again on permitted audio the policy is reflected in the frontline staffs dialogue/language. In conclusion the omission from policy was mirrored by CAFCASS staff: FCA’s, Manager, SSM, CST. Given that children by association are affected by their connection to a persons disability it would be in every child’s interest for CAFCASS to assess the negative impact.

Your framework rolled out October 2010 and I have a paperwork trail which clearly demonstrates invisibility of disability where practice reflects in real terms policy.

Therefore please provide the name of the persons within CAFCASS who have taken the decision not to assess the negative impact and their rationale for not assessing the negative impact ?

An example of how CAFCASS public sector duty could apply is that CAFCASS should consult with the people who use your service and families and consider the impact of your decisions have upon service users and their families. If you fail to do this you may not have followed your public service duty

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]