Mother concerned about court adviser's referral

What happened

Ms A's children's paternal grandparents made an application for contact with her children. A family court adviser was asked to report to the court on the application. During her enquiries, the family court adviser became concerned about the emotional wellbeing of the children. She made a referral to the local authority and recommended that the court should order a report from the local authority on the family situation as a whole. The court ordered this and the local authority reported no concerns.

Ms A considered that the favourable report from the local authority proved that the family court adviser had not done her job properly, and she had been wrong to have referred the case as she did. Ms A was also concerned about the enquiries the family court adviser made, and felt that there were a number of factual errors in the report.

Cafcass upheld part of Ms A's complaint but did not agree that the family court adviser was at fault in referring the case to the local authority. It said that the family court adviser had used her professional judgment.

The paternal grandparents dropped the application and the local authority was no longer involved. However, Ms A felt that she and her family had been put through unnecessary distress and that the family court adviser's report was still on record. She wanted Cafcass to accept that there had been errors and to apologise. She also wanted financial redress.

What we found

We did not uphold this complaint. There was no evidence to demonstrate a failing by the family court adviser as Ms A described. There were times when the family court adviser had not provided the level of service that Ms A and her family had a right to expect, but we did not feel that there was evidence to question her professional judgment in involving the local authority in Ms A's case.

Putting it right

Cafcass had recognised the areas where its service had fallen short, and had remedied those accordingly. While we had sympathy with the distress caused to Ms A and her family by the proceedings, we were satisfied that this had not been caused by an administrative error by Cafcass.