Internal Relocation
Dear Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service,
I am doing some research on the mechanics of internal relocation by a parent and the best outcomes for children. I would be grateful if you could provide the following information and statistics:
1. In the year 2016 how many s7 reports did Cafcass provide? Please provide a month by month breakdown.
2. Of these s7 reports, how many involved an application from one parent to relocate to another part of the United Kingdom?
3. If you do not collate the statistical data in Q2 centrally please advise what data around the type and source of an application that triggers a s7 report that you do collate centrally.
Yours faithfully,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email.
Please accept this as a formal acknowledgement of your Freedom of
Information request which was received on 29 May 2017. Your reference
number is CAF 17-58.
We aim to respond to you promptly, and at the latest 20 working days from
receipt of your request. You will therefore receive a response on or
before 26 June 2017.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk
[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email
References
Visible links
1. mailto:[CAFCASS request email]
2. http://www.cafcass.gov.uk/
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email. Please find attached our response to your
Freedom of Information request.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk
[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email
References
Visible links
1. mailto:[CAFCASS request email]
2. http://www.cafcass.gov.uk/
Dear Governance - Cafcass,
Thank you for providing the spreadsheet of s7 numbers for 2016. I note that you have generated this by running a simple report on your ECMS system. In that spreadsheet you confirm that: "Data Source: Data taken from the Cafcass national database (ECMS). ECMS is a live system, continually updated and is subject to change when further updates are made. "
Please could you provide a list of all of the reports that you are able to run from your ECMS system. A screenshot, (or series of screenshots), will be acceptable if that is the simplest way for you to provide this list.
Yours sincerely,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Please find attached a list of the reports ECMS is able to run for public and private law cases.
Please note that Cafcass does not have a list or record of all the report types that can be generated on ECMS and in providing a response, the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit which for Cafcass is £450. In our estimation the cost (a flat rate of £25 per hour provided by the FOI Act) would exceed the appropriate limit which is 18 hours for Cafcass, in order to complete one or more of the following activities permitted to be accounted for, which are:
· Determining whether the information is held;
· Locating the information, or a document containing it;
· Retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
· Extracting the information from a document containing it.
A response to this request is therefore exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.
12 Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.
1. Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
2. Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.
3. In subsections (1) and (2) “the appropriate limit” means such amount as may be prescribed, and different amounts may be prescribed in relation to different cases.
4. The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that, in such circumstances as may be prescribed, where two or more requests for information are made to a public authority—
(a) by one person, or
(b) by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.
5. The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the purposes of this section as to the costs to be estimated and as to the manner in which they are to be estimated
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] | www.cafcass.gov.uk
Dear Governance - Cafcass,
Thank you for your reply.
Could you just confirm for me - the reports you detail in your attached spreadsheet file (for which I am grateful); do these relate to reports that you are able to run on an individual case or do they relate to reports that you can run across all your cases?
For example you have a report entitled "Letter to a Judge" - does this generate a report on an individual case showing that a "Letter to a Judge" has been sent or does it produce a report across all your cases showing how many have included a "Letter to a Judge"?
Yours sincerely,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email.
ECMS can be used to run a report on specific cases to show whether specific report templates, such as the "Letter to a Judge", are present in a case and can run reports to show the number of cases where report templates, such as a "Letter to a Judge", has been recorded.
Please note that the spreadsheet sent in the FOI response was a list of the type of report templates which may be used in private law and public law cases, and which ECMS can run reports on as stated above, rather than a list of all the reports that ECMS can generate for private law and public law cases. As stated in our response below, Cafcass does not have a list or record of all the report types that can be generated on ECMS and in providing a response, the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit which for Cafcass.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] | www.cafcass.gov.uk
Dear Governance - Cafcass,
Thank you for a very clear explanation. I appreciate your help.
Please can you run a report "to show the number of cases where report templates, such as a "Letter to a Judge", has been recorded" for 2015 and for 2016 and provide the figures, preferably broken down by month but yearly is sufficient.
many thanks
Yours sincerely,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email.
Upon following up with your request, we have discovered that unfortunately the original list supplied to you is out of date and consequently contains some errors, in that not all of the report types listed are currently active on the system and have not been active for some time. There are also a number of other reports on the list that have not existed on the ECMS system for two to three years.
Please accept our apologies for this error and for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused you. Please find attached the correct and up to date list.
In regards to your request, please you could confirm if you are looking for a report on the number of cases filed where the fields listed in the attached spreadsheet has been recorded for 2015 and for 2016, preferably broken down by month. This is so we can ensure we fully understand what information is being requested.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
G [CAFCASS request email] | www.cafcass.gov.uk
Dear Governance - Cafcass,
Thank you for your reply and for your admission that you had (only very recently) supplied out of date and incorrect information to me under a FOI request.
I note from your re-supplied file that a number of standard reports have been removed - most notably the "Letter to the Judge" report and the "Wishes and Feelings" report.
Could you confirm the dates when these reporting functions were removed from your ECMS system.
Could you also provide any internal documents that relate to the removal of this including internal emails/letters, policy documents, and copies of emails/letters to the provider of the ECMS system who made the change to this reporting system.
Could you confirm on what date you obtained that original spreadsheet of reports available that you initially supplied to me, and confirm who you obtained it from. A position or job title will be sufficient to preserve anonymity if you require.
Could you confirm who the supplier is of your ECMS system.
Could you confirm whether you have any form of external support and maintenance agreement for the ECMS system and if so, please name the supplier that is party to that agreement.
Yours sincerely,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email.
Please accept this as a formal acknowledgement of your Freedom of
Information request which was received on 15 July 2017. Your reference
number is CAF 17-87.
We aim to respond to you promptly, and at the latest 20 working days from
receipt of your request. You will therefore receive a response on or
before 10 August 2017.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk
[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email. Please find attached our response to your
Freedom of Information request.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk
[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email
Dear Governance - Cafcass,
Thank you for your reply.
In my request to you I asked you to "confirm on what date you obtained that original spreadsheet of reports available that you initially supplied to me, and confirm who you obtained it from. A
position or job title will be sufficient to preserve anonymity if you require. "
You have not supplied this. Instead you replied to say:
"This information was supplied by the Cafcass Analytics team. All data is produced by the Cafcass Analytics team, during a routine quality assurance, issues were highlighted and rectified with the original spreadsheet."
From the original meta-data on the spreadsheet you supplied it can be seen that the spreadsheet was created by your employee Rob Moore who classes himself as an MIS Assistant, presumably within your MIS team. This spreadsheet was created in response to my request of 13th June 2017 by Rob Moore for you on 27th June 2017 and supplied to me on the 30th June.
I wrote to you on the 11th July to clarify that you could run these reports from your spreadsheet and on teh 12th July you replied confirming that you could.
When asked by me on 15th July for a copy of one of the reports contained within that spreadsheet you said that this report was no longer available and you then supplied a further spreadsheet showing these reports have been removed.
In your additional clarification you say these reports were removed in April 2016.
This is strange as the meta-data of the latest spreadsheet shows that it is the same spreadsheet originally created by Rob Moore on 27th June and that this file was updated by your employee Elizabeth Morrison (who I believe is employed by Cafcass as the Board and Corporate Support Assistant) on Saturday 15th July at 9pm.
It would seem very strange that firstly, a request for report types would lead to you providing a list that is more than a year out of date, despite the date you generated the list being a current date, and it would seem even stranger that your Board and Corporate Support Assistant, on receiving a request from me for a copy of the reports, would, on a Saturday evening at 9pm, when surely most if not all of your analytics and MIS teams would not be at work, would immediately edit and update the list and resupply it with the reports removed.
Please clarify why this has occurred and why there are so many discrepancies with the data you have supplied and your responses.
You have been very helpful with requests that I have made to you so this does seem an extraordinary way to behave with this request. I can only assume that Cafcass is trying not to provide a copy of any of these reports. Should I not receive a satisfactory answer I will, rather sadly, have to escalate this to an internal review and ultimately to a complaint. I'm loathe to do so, so I trust you will be able to furnish the information I am requesting.
Yours sincerely,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email.
This is an acknowledgement of your email in which you raise concerns in
regards to the information sent to you, in regards to ECMS reports. We
will endeavour to provide a full response to your queries as soon as
possible.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk
[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email
Dear Governance - Cafcass,
I haven't had a reply form you. Please could you respond.
Yours sincerely,
H. Grants
Dear H Grants,
Thank you for your email in which you raise queries in regards to the
information sent to you by Cafcass in regards to ECMS reports.
The Analytics team, formerly known as the MIS team, query the ECMS
database using Transact Structured Query Language (T-SQL). In the initial
spreadsheet first provided to you, a filter was not applied to the base
query when generating this information and as such, the original
spreadsheet contained all records in the reports reference table.
When this was re-visited after your follow-up questions in regards to
whether the reports can be run on an individual case or across all
cases, specifically in relation to Letters to Judges, it was found that
inactive report types had been included in the original spreadsheet sent
to you. The query was then re-run and it outputs copied over to the
original file.
Cafcass does not report on inactive report types and as such, the second
spreadsheet was sent to provide a more accurate response to your initial
query.
The Cafcass Analytics team, of which Rob Moore is a member, produced the
original spreadsheet and subsequent re-run. Please note that the MIS team
became the Cafcass Analytics Team in April 2017.
When the second spreadsheet was sent to Elizabeth Morrison, who is a
member of the Governance team who handle Freedom of Information requests,
in order to send this to you, the original spreadsheet was then deleted.
Both spreadsheets held the same name 'Active ECMS reports by law type'.
Elizabeth Morrison did not edit either spreadsheet at any point, including
Saturday 15 July 2017 at 9.00pm and unfortunately we are unable to explain
why the metadata shows this.
We hope that this explanation answers your queries in regards to the
information sent to you in relation to ECMS reports.
Kind regards,
Governance Team | Cafcass
* [1][CAFCASS request email] | ü [2]www.cafcass.gov.uk
[3]Cafcass_Logo_2014_email
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