CAFCASS
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People's views please of anyone having had to deal with CAFCASS x
Is this in terms of public law or private law?
My son is having to go through court to get access again and CAFCAS have done a report for the court that is absolutely full of lies what the mother has said. Are we in for a fight with them or can we rely on them to be fair. I know nothing about them x
Cafcass are an independent body and should write a report reflecting all sides and come to their own analysis of what's in the best interest of the children. They should not 'side' with one party as such, but ultimately they will need to come to a recommendation and sadly in these cases their recommendations are likely to suit one party better than the other, because they are employed usually when two parties can't agree
Cafcass are employed usually in two circumstances:
1) when a local authority social services is engaging in legal proceedings eg recommending a child is removed from their birth parents, a cafcass social worker is involved. They are called a children's 'guardian' and are an independent voice for the child. They write an independent assessment and recommendations for what should happen.
2) in private law, when residency and contact arrangements are being worked out and parents can't come to a joint decision despite mediation etc, an independent social worker report will be requested from the court. Usually if the children are open to the local authority, their pre existing social worker would write this. Occasionally a court insists it's a cafcass worker. If the children were closed and had been closed for at least 3 months to the local authority, it would always go to cafcass. I think this is the situation your son is in.
In my experience the opinions of the cafcass social workers are held in high regard by courts, but that doesn't mean your son won't get an opportunity to put his perspective across. If your son doesn't have solicitor for this process it will be more difficult to fight them and I advise you to engage one if you are concerned about bias.
Does he separately have the local authority social services involved as well?
What you need to do is challenge the inaccuracies but ALSO prove that these inaccuracies fundamentally impact the risk assessment on your son.
For example, they might have his middle name wrong. Yes it's an inaccuracy, but it doesn't make a difference to their recommendation
Conversely, they might have his offences wrong, which hugely impacts the recommendation.
If the cafcass worker is quoting something the mother has said as fact and strongly informing her opinion, you need to give clear evidence about how that isn't true. I would try to set up a meeting with the cafcass worker ASAP to go through the report and understand how they've formed their opinion and work out whether the inaccuracies have affected this.
I would, at least initially, go in in a very friendly and open way, I would talk about the importance of children's attachment, quote evidence about absent parents and the impact on children, discuss the extremely low recidivism of these offences, the extremely low risk they pose against their own children etc but also not minimise - be really clear about the risk assessments and safety planning you have done. Accept that they currently believe your son could be in the % that pose a risk to his children and how this will be managed eg supervised contact etc.
Hope that's helpful and I hope you are able to put this to the back of your mind for a couple of days and enjoy some of the Christmas holidays!
Cafcass are employed usually in two circumstances:
1) when a local authority social services is engaging in legal proceedings eg recommending a child is removed from their birth parents, a cafcass social worker is involved. They are called a children's 'guardian' and are an independent voice for the child. They write an independent assessment and recommendations for what should happen.
2) in private law, when residency and contact arrangements are being worked out and parents can't come to a joint decision despite mediation etc, an independent social worker report will be requested from the court. Usually if the children are open to the local authority, their pre existing social worker would write this. Occasionally a court insists it's a cafcass worker. If the children were closed and had been closed for at least 3 months to the local authority, it would always go to cafcass. I think this is the situation your son is in.
In my experience the opinions of the cafcass social workers are held in high regard by courts, but that doesn't mean your son won't get an opportunity to put his perspective across. If your son doesn't have solicitor for this process it will be more difficult to fight them and I advise you to engage one if you are concerned about bias.
Does he separately have the local authority social services involved as well?
What you need to do is challenge the inaccuracies but ALSO prove that these inaccuracies fundamentally impact the risk assessment on your son.
For example, they might have his middle name wrong. Yes it's an inaccuracy, but it doesn't make a difference to their recommendation
Conversely, they might have his offences wrong, which hugely impacts the recommendation.
If the cafcass worker is quoting something the mother has said as fact and strongly informing her opinion, you need to give clear evidence about how that isn't true. I would try to set up a meeting with the cafcass worker ASAP to go through the report and understand how they've formed their opinion and work out whether the inaccuracies have affected this.
I would, at least initially, go in in a very friendly and open way, I would talk about the importance of children's attachment, quote evidence about absent parents and the impact on children, discuss the extremely low recidivism of these offences, the extremely low risk they pose against their own children etc but also not minimise - be really clear about the risk assessments and safety planning you have done. Accept that they currently believe your son could be in the % that pose a risk to his children and how this will be managed eg supervised contact etc.
Hope that's helpful and I hope you are able to put this to the back of your mind for a couple of days and enjoy some of the Christmas holidays!
In the moment. Thank you for taking the time to explain all that. It's just another hurdle we have to cross. All he wants is supervised access again which we had had for the 18 months up to his plea hearing, when she then stopped everyone in our family from seeing them. Their case was originally closed by SS as their mother was happy for him to see them 2/3 times a week and stated numerous times she had absolutely no concerns about my ability to supervise and the children wanted to see their dad. I Think this time of year everything just feels worse. Be glad when Xmas is over with xx