Cafcass' delay and poor complaint handling caused distress and frustration

What happened

Ms B's ex-partner, Mr D, applied to the court for a residence order and a prohibited steps order (PSO), preventing Ms B from removing their children from his care. The court granted the PSO.

At a hearing in mid-summer 2010, the court made a number of orders including that Cafcass submit a report about the children's welfare (a section 7 report) by autumn 2010. The court told the Cafcass area manager to say if Cafcass could not submit the report by the given deadline and ordered for the case to be heard two weeks after the agreed deadline, on the first available date.

However, due to an office move and workload pressures, Cafcass took over six months to produce the report. It missed several deadlines and extensions. The Cafcass family court advisor (FCA) then did not attend a court hearing to answer questions about the report because she no longer worked for Cafcass. The court criticised Cafcass for the delay it had caused, the quality of the report and the FCA's failure to attend the hearing. The court also recorded that this had caused serious financial implications for the parents, who had to pay for their own legal fees.

In 2013 Ms B met Cafcass to complain about its poor service. Cafcass couldn't deal with her complaint because it was outside of its published time limit for making a complaint. Ms B then complained to us and we asked Cafcass to look at her complaint. Cafcass recognised and apologised for some, but not all, of the administrative mistakes it had made. It also agreed to pay seven months of Ms B's legal costs. However, we did not think it had gone far enough to put things right.

What we found

We agreed that Cafcass had caused a seven-month delay to proceedings. We also found that Cafcass failed to seek the court's guidance as to who should attend future hearings when the FCA left; it did not look into Ms B's complaint as it should have done when she first approached it in summer 2011; it failed to give Ms B's 2013 complaint proper consideration before refusing to investigate because it was outside of the time limit for making complaints; and it failed to consider Ms B's request for a payment for the emotional distress and frustration she had experienced.

Putting it right

We thought that Cafcass' agreement to pay seven months' worth of Ms B's total legal fees was a reasonable remedy for her wasted costs. Cafcass also complied with our recommendations and apologised to Ms B for failing to deal with her complaint properly and paid her £750 in recognition of the distress and frustration its mistakes caused her.