Cafcass' mistakes added to mother's frustration and distress during a child custody hearing

What happened

Ms D's ex-husband made an application for contact with their children. But Ms D didn't want him to have contact because of his past behaviour. The court appointed Cafcass to give advice. Three Cafcass officers were involved in Ms D's case. Cafcass interviewed Ms D over the phone and officer A wrote a letter which included details of Ms D's ex-husband's extensive criminal history and other allegations that Ms D made.

The case was then allocated to officer B who interviewed Ms D and her children. When officer B submitted a report about the children's welfare (a section 7 report), she noted that the children had mixed feelings about seeing their father and she recommended supervised contact in a contact centre setting. At a later date officer B wrote to Ms D to say that the court had ordered another report and she would be in contact with her to arrange an interview date.

But the case was later allocated to officer C, and the court ordered her to observe contact between the children and their father at a contact centre. Officer C commented positively about the children's contact with their father and his new girlfriend, and recommended overnight contact in her section 7 report. However, she submitted the report to court without interviewing Ms D.

At the final hearing, Ms D made a number of allegations about her ex-husband. But his solicitors said that some of these were not true. They argued that, if they had been true, she would have mentioned them to Cafcass officers. Ms D tried to defend herself against this by pointing out that she had not been interviewed when Cafcass completed its reports. When the judge asked officer C if this was true, she could not confirm one way or the other. This is because it was not clear from Cafcass's records whether Ms D had or hadn't been interviewed.

Ms D complained to Cafcass that it was unfair that she had not been interviewed. She said there were many issues that the Cafcass officers involved in her case didn't look into enough.

What we found

Although it was unusual that Cafcass hadn't interviewed Ms D for its reports, we did not criticise it for this. This is because Cafcass' rules do not say that it always has to interview parents and this was a matter for Ms D to challenge in court.

However, when Ms D tried to raise this matter in court her efforts were frustrated. Cafcass' records should have been up to date and it should have been able to tell the judge what level of contact it had had with Ms D. We found the fact that Cafcass couldn't was a failing and it made the hearing more difficult for Ms D than it otherwise would have been.

Putting it right

Cafcass accepted our recommendations and apologised to Ms D. It paid her £250 in recognition of the unnecessary distress that it caused her. We also recommended that Cafcass should tell Ms D what it had done to improve its record keeping.