Implacable hostility

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,

Is it documented anywhere by CAFCASS that if 'parent A punishes the child for having good contact with parent B then CAFCASS can/will sometime suggest parent B to have less of no contact"

I would also like to know the thoughts of CAFCASS as a whole, as to whether they support this mentality or if there is any documentation/training/guidance in existing which might address such ill beliefs or mentalities.

Do CAFCASS officers take any form of discrimination training to keep them up to date with currently beliefs and values of modern day sociality, if so please could you provide me with a copy of such train manuals.

Yours faithfully,

Paul Archer

Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

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Dear Mr Archer

Thank you for your email.

Please find attached our formal acknowledgement of your Freedom of Information request.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Archer

Thank you for your email.

Please find attached our response to your Freedom of Information request.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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Dear Governance - Cafcass,

Thank you for your reply, I found the links to my last question helpful. However please could I ask for more of a dervinative answer to questions 1 & 2...

I put: Is it documented anywhere by CAFCASS that if 'parent A punishes the child for having good contact with parent B then CAFCASS can/will sometime suggest parent B to have less of no contact"

CAFCASS put: This information is not held by Cafcass.

My question: please could you explain why this information is not held by CAFCASS? It is not clear if it is not documented because this is not a mentality that CAFCASS follow or share, or if such mentalities are hidden from the transparency CAFCASS would normally abide by?

I put: I would also like to know the thoughts of CAFCASS as a whole, as to whether they support this mentality or if there is any documentation/training/guidance in existing which might address such ill beliefs or mentalities.

Cafcass put: Cafcass’ role is to assess children’s needs, to write reports or a case analysis for court making recommendations for how a child’s welfare and best interests can be best promoted and safeguarded. Therefore, when considering how much time a child should spend with each parent, Cafcass’ recommendation to the court will be based on what the Cafcass officer assesses is in the child’s best interests in that specific case. This will be different in every case, as every case is individual and depends on many factors including, but not limited to, the child’s age, personality, stage of development, relationship with the parents, as well as the relationship between parents.

In accordance with Government policy, Cafcass supports children maintaining a meaningful relationship with both parents, where it is safe and in the best interests of the child to do so. All practitioner recommendations are case specific and are based on their professional judgement of the child’s welfare. All of our training revolves around being child centred, and taking into account risk factors, evidence-based assessments, and diversity issues.

My question: I understand all of the above despite its vagueness in most areas. The information I am specificity after is if a CAFCASS officer recommends less or no contact for such reasons as "A, B" sinario, then what would be the outcome of this employees future?

Using the information (links) you provided regarding training and equality, (also covered in the documents you provided was the child's mental health and well being) it clearly covers equality and not being favourable to one gender over anther. So my question, what would happen to a CAFCASS employee If they believe 'if parent A punishes the child for having good contact with parent B then CAFCASS can/will sometime suggest parent B to have no contact' as you state it is not documented so therefor can not be a topic or indicator within to CAFCASS framework of correct analysis.

It is my understand that such beliefs would be contrary to what a social worker would have been trained on, and would technically be encouraging parents to abuise there children while Holden them to ransom of there human rights, which I believe goes against any legislation/law that covers Stockholm syndrome.

To confirm: what would happen to aCAFCASS employee for having such beliefs?

Kind regards,

Mr Archer - quilifed in child psychology.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Archer

Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

Dear Mr Archer

Thank you for your email which is a follow up to CAF 15-44. Please consider this an acknowledgement of receipt of your request which will be responded to on or before 8 May 2015.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

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Dear Mr Archer

Thank you for your email.

Please find attached our response to your Freedom of Information request follow up questions.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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A1) This information is not held as it is in relation to a specific hypothetical situation on which Cafcass has no recorded information; the view of Cafcass in relation to contact recommendations in general was given in response to your second question in CAF 15-44.

Q1 - I fail to understand how a question that has only two responses (positive - negative) can possible be considered hypothetical. FACT1 -children are punished by parent A for having positive contact with parent B. FACT2 - CAFCASS acknowledge such behaviour exists. CAFCASS refer to this as implacable hostility, where victims refer to it as parental alienation. FACT3 - I asked "is it documented anywhere by CAFCASS, that if parent A punishes the child for having good contact with parent B, then CAFCASS recommend less or no contact with parent B" while also asking for an insight on such beliefs. FACT4 - CAFCASS reply via WhatDoTheyKnow was "this is not documented"

Non Hypothetical question, based on a factual discussion - "it is not clear if it is not documented because this is not a mentality that CAFCASS follow or share, or if such mentalities are hidden from the transparency CAFCASS would normally abide by."

Basically could you be clearer... do CAFCASS state or believe "if parent A punishes a child for having good contact with parent B then CAFCASS will recommend less or no contact"? Again this is a factual question requesting a factual reply. Yes or no? You have already stated this is not documented anywhere so please do not attempt to refer me to CAFCASS frame work.

2) My question: I understand all of the above despite its vagueness in most areas. The information I am specificity after is if a CAFCASS officer recommends less or no contact for such reasons as "A, B" sinario, then what would be the outcome of this employees future?

It is not the function of Freedom of Information to provide responses to hypothetical situations, where providing a response would require the creation of new information, judgements or opinions. However, please see our Supervision Policy and Employee Relations Policy for general information on how Cafcass practitioners’ work and recommendations are monitored, and how employee relations issues are handled within Cafcass.

A2) If you answer question 1) I will happily close and submit a new request asking for the extended information that a seek in questions 2,3

3) what would happen to aCAFCASS employee for having such beliefs ['if parent A punishes the child for having good contact with parent B then CAFCASS can/will sometime suggest parent B to have no contact']?

Please see the response to question 2.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Archer

Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Archer

Thank you for your email. This has been treated as a request for an internal review of the response to your Freedom of Information request.

Please find attached our formal acknowledgement of this request.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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Dear Governance - Cafcass,

I did not request a internal review. Please could you tell me why this has now become so?

All I ask "do CAFCASS state or believe "if
parent A punishes a child for having good contact with parent B
then CAFCASS will recommend less or no contact"

Yes or no will do. I do not feel it is a question that requires a internal review, and I fear cafcass will atempt to avoid answering the question with vague statements of "cafcass framework" when it is already documented you don't hold such information.

Regardless of the reasons why, either cafcass support the emontail and moraly crime of holding a child to ransom or they do not, under such circumstances. No internal review should be needed to answer such a question.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Archer

Paul Archer left an annotation ()

please could I have a simple answer to this simple question, and can you not aviod answering the question in the first instances.

Dear Governance - Cafcass,

please could I have a simple answer to this simple question, and can you not aviod answering the question in the first instances.

why has this turned into a internal review?

Yours sincerely,

Paul Archer

Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

Dear Mr Archer

Thank you for your email. As confirmed in our previous response to you, we feel that we have fully answered your request as required under the Freedom of Information Act. However, we offer an internal review to any applicants who are unhappy with the way in which their request was handled, or who is dissatisfied with the decision made regarding disclosure or non-disclosure of information. Please see our Freedom of Information Policy section 2.3 for further information relating to 'Complaints regarding responses': http://www.cafcass.gov.uk/media/231983/f...

As your email of 14 April confirmed you were unhappy with the initial response, we will conduct an internal review of the response given.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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Governance - Cafcass, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Archer

Please find attached our internal review response.

Kind regards,

Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] |  www.cafcass.gov.uk 

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