Cafcass's poor record keeping caused confusion

What happened

The police sent Cafcass information about Mr A, and Cafcass then sent that information to court. Cafcass did not speak to Mr A before doing that.

Cafcass later acknowledged that most of that information was not relevant to Mr A's case, and it wrote to the court and Mr A to tell them that. But because Cafcass sent the letters to the wrong address, Mr A got those letters late.

Mr A complained that Cafcass did not follow its procedures when it dealt with his case. He was also unhappy about the way that the Cafcass officer at court spoke to him, and how Cafcass had dealt with his complaint.

What we found

The Cafcass officer who handled Mr A's case did not record the reasons for her actions. It was therefore impossible to find out exactly what she had done. However, she acknowledged that she should not have included the police information in her letter to the court. She had already resolved this by writing to the court.

The police information did not come from the police national computer, but from the local force. Cafcass said that Mr A could complain to the local police force if he was unhappy about what the police had said about him.

Cafcass sent Mr A's post to the wrong address because it had been given that address by a third party (so the mistake was not its fault).

We partly upheld the complaint.

Putting it right

Cafcass apologised to Mr A and showed us that its recording standard had improved since Mr A had complained.