Complaint about a Cafcass Family Court Adviser

What happened

Mr Y applied to the Family courts for contact with his children. Cafcass produced a report for the first hearing but sent this to the wrong email address. Mr Y did not receive the report until the morning of the first hearing. After the hearing a Cafcass Family Court Adviser (FCA) interviewed Mr Y to gather information for a second report. Mr Y was unhappy with the FCA's behaviour during the interview, and with the contents of both their reports, so he complained to Cafcass.

Mr Y told Cafcass it was unfair that he had not received the first report until the day of the hearing. When Cafcass responded to Mr Y's complaint it apologised for sending the report to the wrong email address. Cafcass also notified its information governance department about the incident. Cafcass told Mr Y that the FCA refuted his allegations about its behaviour.

Cafcass explained that if Mr Y wanted to challenge the FCA's professional judgment then he must do this in court. Mr Y was unhappy with the way Cafcass had responded to his complaint, so he asked his MP to refer the matter to us.

What we found

We did not uphold this case as Cafcass had already accepted the failings in relation to the report. Although Cafcass had sent Mr Y's report to the wrong email address, it had done enough to put matters right by apologising. The impact of Mr Y not receiving the report until the last moment was also lessened because the hearing the report had been prepared for had been adjourned for an entirely separate reason. We made no finding on Mr Y's complaint about the FCA's behaviour because there was no evidence to say whether one person's version of events was more likely than the others.

We agreed that the remaining issues raised by Mr Y were matters suited to the court. We told Mr Y that while we could look into complaints about Cafcass's administrative actions, we would not consider anything that the court was better placed to address.

We explained that the court ultimately makes decisions on what is in the best interests of a child, and the court is therefore the most appropriate place to challenge any recommendations made by Cafcass.