Inappropriate personal information included in a Cafcass report

What happened

A court asked Cafcass to produce a report after Mr F's former partner made an application for residence for one of his children. In that report, Cafcass included information about the parents of one of Mr F's adult children. When the report was sent to Mr F, he left the report 'on the side' and it was read by other family members who were unaware of the adult child's parents. The family members were upset that Mr F had not told them about this before.

Mr F was also unhappy with the report because he felt that Cafcass had included a lot of supportive information about his former partner, but not enough about him. He complained to Cafcass but when it replied to him, it got the names of his children wrong and called them by an incorrect surname.

What we found

Cafcass should not have included information about the adult child's parents in its report, as it was not relevant to the court proceedings that were ongoing. That said, the report was correctly addressed to Mr F and he could have done more to make sure that it was not seen by his family members.

Despite that, even though Cafcass did not cause Mr F's children to find out about the adult child's parents, having to read the unnecessary information in the report would have caused Mr F some frustration and to lose some confidence in Cafcass's service. Cafcass should also have taken more care to refer to his children by the correct name.

We did not uphold Mr F's complaint about the amount of supportive information Cafcass included in the report. That was a matter of the Cafcass officer's professional judgment, which could have been challenged in court.

Putting it right

Cafcass apologised to Mr F for the mistakes it made in his case.