What We Want Cafcass To Do

Five changes. None of them new law. All of them things a confident organisation would want anyway.

Our Position

If Cafcass is confident it does a good job — show it. We are not asking for anything the law does not already require. We are offering the means to prove they are doing it.

A. Recording

Record every interview, or allow parents to record it.

When there is a recording, what a parent said cannot be misremembered or misrepresented. What reaches the court matches what was actually said in the room. That protects the family court officer just as much as it protects the parent — a recording is the fastest way to end a dispute about who said what.

B. Data Accuracy

Information held on Cafcass systems must be accurate and verifiable, and parents must be able to check it and challenge it.

Records written about a family follow that family for years. If something in them is wrong, the person it is written about is usually the only one who knows — and is currently the last to find out.

C. Complaints

Every complaint recorded as received, and followed through in public view.

Recorded as received — not filtered before it counts.
Categorised by type — inaccuracy, communication, conduct, delay, data breach.
Action taken — recorded.
Resolution — recorded.
The user asked: do you agree with this resolution? Yes / No — and the answer published.

That last line is the one that matters. An organisation can close every complaint and still satisfy nobody. Publishing whether the person who complained accepted the outcome is the difference between a process and an answer.

D. User Feedback

An exit questionnaire for every parent at the end of their case, published as open data.

Accuracy of what was reported
Communication
Whether you felt heard
Overall experience

Every parent, not a sample. At the end, when they can judge the whole of it.

E. Continuous Improvement

Use the complaints data and the feedback to improve the service — and publish the progress.

Collecting all of the above and acting on none of it would be worse than not collecting it. Published transparently means anyone can see whether it is getting better, including Cafcass.

Who is asking

This site is run by Kev Higgins, who brings fifteen years of direct experience of the family court system.

Won in court.
Complaints upheld by Cafcass.
Complaints upheld by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
Holds a recording that demonstrates inaccurate reporting.

Not a disgruntled parent — an expert by experience proposing structural change. The five asks above would have been worth making without any of that history. It is offered only so you know they come from somebody who has been through the process and read the paperwork.

None of this requires a new law

Recording, accurate records, honest complaints handling, asking people what they thought, and acting on the answer. An organisation doing a good job loses nothing by proving it.

Rate your experience