Dear Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service,

On Saturday 14th October 2017 your CEO Anthony Douglas unveiled a draft version of his proposed High Conflict Pathway at a Parental Alienation Workshop in London. He also stated that there would be mandatory training for all FCAs on this pathway.

Please would you:

1. Provide a copy of the draft copy of the High Conflict Pathway document that Anthony Douglas presented from at the event

2. Confirm who the authors of the High Conflict Pathway are

3. Confirm what training has been provisioned already for this High Conflict Pathway

4. Confirm what training will be mandatory for this High Conflict Pathway

5. Confirm who will be authoring any training, existing or proposed

Yours faithfully,

R. Harrison

Dear Governance - Cafcass,

Thank you for your reply.

Please could you provide the proposed publication date of this new Pathway?

Please could you provide details of any organisations that you have contacted with a view to involving them in assessing the suitability of this pathway or to provide input into its creation.

The above items form part of this FOI request. This next section does not however I am providing it for future researchers to have access to and for you to circulate within Cafcass and most especially to Mr Douglas your CEO as he has a personal interest in this new High Conflict Pathway - I am therefore sure that he will personally be extremely interested in seeing your response and my comments below:

1. Your internal team is not qualified to produce this Pathway without the input and expertise of external specialists. I am horrified that you are doing this, especially as Mr Douglas described it as being the solution to Parental Alienation.

2. Your NIS (National Improvement Service) team are no more qualified than I am or your librarian to produce training on High Conflict or Parental Alienation without the input and expertise of external specialists. I am horrified that you are saying the NIS are doing this, especially as Mr Douglas is aware of the deficit in training standards within Cafcass.

3. It is no good having mandatory training if the training itself or the tool that they are being trained on is deficient. I am horrified and deeply concerned that Mr Douglas is not aware that the organisation appear to be rushing this through into practice without ensuring that the tool and any training is fit for use.

Yours sincerely,

R. Harrison

Dear Governance - Cafcass,

I have been informed that consultation packs on the proposed High Conflict Pathway have been sent out to various external parties.

Please provide a list of any and all external parties that you are consulting with on this new pathway.

Please provide a copy of the consultation pack.

Yours sincerely,

R. Harrison