Mr S was involved in family court proceedings but was unhappy with the way officers at the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) had dealt with his case over four years. He wanted Cafcass to be held accountable and a payment for his legal costs.
What happened
Mr S wanted to have increased contact with his son. He spent four years trying to resolve matters in court so that he could see his son more often. Over this time Mr S dealt with five Cafcass officers.
Before the final hearing Mr S complained to Cafcass. Mr S was mainly unhappy with the most recent officer involved in his case, but he complained about Cafcass's involvement since the beginning of proceedings. He said all the officers were biased in favour of his son's mother. Mr S gave supporting information with his complaint, including recordings of the officers that he had made covertly, which he said contained evidence of coercion and manipulation.
Cafcass received Mr S's complaint a month before the final hearing, but it decided not to respond at that time because of the upcoming hearing. Cafcass responded to Mr S's complaint six weeks after the final hearing had taken place. Cafcass said it would not consider Mr S's recordings in line with its policy on covert evidence. Cafcass also told Mr S that if he wanted to challenge the recommendations made by the officer he must do this in court. Mr S was unhappy with Cafcass' response and asked his MP to refer his complaint to us.
What we found
We did not uphold Mr S's complaint. We could see that Cafcass had properly followed its policy when it refused to consider Mr S's covert recordings, but as we were not bound by this policy, we decided to look at the evidence (which had also been seen by the court). We did not share Mr S's concern that the recordings contained any evidence of malpractice.
These proceedings took place over a long time, but this was caused by many different factors. We could not identify any significant errors on Cafcass' part, which would have caused any undue delays.
Cafcass had failed to deal with Mr S's complaint properly by not dealing with it as soon as it received it. However, we could see that Cafcass had already apologised to Mr S for this and we decided that this was sufficient.
Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass)
UK
Delayed replying to complaint
Did not apologise properly or do enough to put things right