Complaint that Cafcass's involvement with hearing in the Family courts negatively affected proceedings

What happened

Miss S was opposed to her ex–partner's application to obtain a 50/50 shared residence order for their child. She felt that regular contact would be more appropriate. The court asked Cafcass to produce a report to help it decide on the application. When Miss S received the report, she was distressed to find that Cafcass had recommended that her ex–partner should be given shared residence. Miss S also noted that the report contained a factually inaccurate statement, and she told Cafcass about this. Cafcass realised the error and wrote to the court to correct this; however, Cafcass then made another inaccurate statement to the court. Miss S went to the final hearing with her legal representative to challenge Cafcass's recommendation.

During the court hearing, the Cafcass officer realised that they had overlooked a vital piece of information at the time they wrote their report, and they revised their recommendation. The court awarded Miss S sole residency of the child and gave her ex?partner regular contact. Miss S then complained to Cafcass and said there had been a lack of professionalism in its handling of the case. Miss S also complained that Cafcass had caused her unnecessary legal costs because of the errors in the report and she asked Cafcass to pay her compensation.

Cafcass apologised to Miss S for its mistakes, but said the court had not awarded any costs against it. Cafcass declined to pay compensation to Miss S and she asked her MP to refer the complaint to us.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint. There was a failing when Cafcass produced its report for the court. This caused Miss S unnecessary distress because the report suggested there was a strong possibility that her ex–partner would be given shared residency. Miss S would not have known until the date of the hearing that Cafcass had overlooked an important piece of information and that its recommendation was wrong. We decided that Cafcass should pay Miss S £150 compensation for the distress it had caused.

However, in relation to the legal costs, we decided that we would be speculating if we said that Miss S could have avoided those legal fees, in what was a contested dispute between her and her ex–partner.

Putting it right

Cafcass paid £150 to Miss S.