Consultation outcome

Consultation on the future inspection of Cafcass

Updated 17 March 2021

Applies to England

We have revised the planned publication date of our response to this consultation and the publication of the new framework for the inspection of Cafcass from February 2021 to March 2021. The delay is due to the Ofsted resources that were originally allocated to this consultation being diverted to respond to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. The new framework will apply to inspections of Cafcass taking place after 1 April 2021.

Foreword

Dear reader

I am pleased to introduce our consultation on the framework for the inspection of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass). Cafcass plays a hugely important role in providing expert social work advice to the family court. I am delighted that we are aligning our approach to the inspection of Cafcass with our other social care frameworks. These new proposals will provide a more effective inspection regime while providing the opportunity to reduce the burden of inspection in response to continued good performance. I look forward to hearing your views on our proposals.

Yours sincerely

Yvette Stanley - National Director, Regulation and Social Care

About Ofsted

The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) regulates and inspects to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people and in education and skills for learners of all ages.

About this consultation

This consultation sets out our proposals for the overall approach to the inspection of Cafcass. Your feedback will help us refine and improve our proposed approach. We will consider all responses carefully before finalising and publishing the revised framework in March 2021. We expect to start the new inspections of Cafcass in 2021.

At the heart of our corporate strategy, published in 2017, is our intention to be a force for improvement, by being intelligent, responsible and focused in everything we do. We have applied these principles when developing the proposals set out in this consultation so that the inspection of Cafcass will:

• focus on the things that matter most in children’s lives
• be consistent in our expectations of providers
• prioritise our work where improvement is needed most

Purpose and background to the consultation

Cafcass provides specialist social work advice to the family court in England.

Ofsted has a duty to inspect Cafcass under section 143 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006.

The inspection of Cafcass

Between 2009 and 2013, Ofsted inspected all 17 of the local Cafcass service areas. Inspection reports from that period chart an improvement journey from inadequate to the final 2 service areas being judged good overall in early 2013.

Later in 2013, following consultation, Ofsted published new arrangements for inspecting Cafcass as a national organisation. Cafcass was inspected as a national organisation for the first time in spring 2014 and was judged to be good overall, with outstanding national leadership.

The second national inspection of Cafcass, published in February 2018, judged practice in both public and private law to be good, both local and national leadership to be outstanding and overall effectiveness to be outstanding.

The future inspection of Cafcass

In the light of Cafcass’s sustained high performance over more than 6 years in its inspection outcomes, and after our introduction of 2 new frameworks (the social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) and the inspection of local authority children’s services (ILACS) framework), the time is right for us to review the framework for the inspection of Cafcass. We will develop this in line with our other social care inspection frameworks.

The following section shows how we propose to do this. It sets out the principles and key proposals for the future inspection of Cafcass from 2021.

The consultation seeks your views on our proposals:

• to introduce a whole-system approach that includes not only inspections, but also additional visits and activities outside inspection
• to introduce a new, shortened judgement inspection of Cafcass as a national organisation
• to make a single judgement about the impact of leaders rather than judging local and national leadership separately
• to complete a focused visit at least once between judgement inspections
• that Cafcass should share a self-evaluation with us annually to help inform our inspection planning

We recommend that you read the consultation in full before responding, as your answers to specific questions may affect your view on questions that appear later.

Please bear in mind that this document is about the overall approach and principles.

Proposal 1: A whole-system approach

The bar set by the existing framework remains right and sufficiently challenging, but the proposed grade descriptors (see ‘Grade descriptors’ section) have been refined to make them shorter and more succinct and to better reflect our principles for inspection (set out above).

The new framework seeks to create a whole-system approach that includes not only inspections, but also additional visits and activities outside inspection.

That whole system will include:

• annual sharing by Cafcass of a self-evaluation of frontline practice in both public and private law
• an annual engagement meeting with the Cafcass chief executive and senior leadership team nominees and Ofsted’s national family justice policy and operational leads
• a 3-yearly national judgement inspection
• focused visits between judgement inspections (or inclusion in joint targeted area inspections)

We propose that the 3-yearly inspections will continue to be of the national organisation, but in the light of Cafcass’s history of positive inspection outcomes, it will be shorter than the inspection in the current inspection framework. However, if Cafcass’s performance drops below the level of good, the framework will have the flexibility to extend the period of fieldwork.

This will depend on 3 things:

• continued evidence (through self-evaluation, an annual engagement meeting and the outcome of one or more focused visits) of sustained good performance
• ‘front-loading’ of evidence gathered during the off-site week
• a very focused approach to looking at practice on site

Proposal 2: a new judgement inspection

We propose a new shortened judgement inspection of Cafcass as a national organisation (compared to the length of inspection under the current/previous framework) on a 3-yearly basis. The inspection will give a graded judgement about overall effectiveness.

The judgement inspection will be announced with a minimum of 5 working days’ notice to enable inspectors to carry out substantial off-site analysis. This will be followed by up to 2 weeks of on-site fieldwork. Inspectors will work in small teams, gathering evidence in the geographical areas covered by Cafcass’s operational senior leaders (assistant directors).

We propose that the full judgement inspection should have fieldwork that lasts no longer than 2 weeks. Inspection activity will focus on core areas of service delivery.

The proposed judgement inspection will, through case-tracking and sampling, evaluate the experiences of a sample of children:

• before the first hearing
• during proceedings
• at the end of Cafcass’s involvement

We will continue to focus on direct practice with children and families, working alongside practitioners. We will enhance our evaluation of whether the organisation and its leaders have created the right environment and organisational culture for practice to flourish, rather than looking at the quality and content of strategies. We will look at how leaders and managers improve practice through good-quality and thoughtful practice that enhances the experiences of children and families.

Proposal 3: a single national judgement about the impact of leaders

Our inspection reports must provide enough information to Cafcass to support it in maintaining good and outstanding performance. They should also provide the public and the government with a clear message about the experiences of children and the effectiveness of the service that makes recommendations to the family court.

To provide these clear messages, we will use our standard 4-point judgement scale (outstanding, good, requires improvement to be good, and inadequate) in the 3-yearly judgement inspection. We will make a graded judgement on overall effectiveness and provide a narrative that explains the reasons for this judgement, giving Cafcass the information that it needs to recognise its achievements and support improvement.

We propose to make the following judgements at the 3-yearly inspection.

The overall effectiveness of Cafcass and areas for improvement, derived from:

• the quality and effectiveness of Cafcass private law practice with children and families
• the quality and effectiveness of Cafcass public law practice with children and families
• the impact of leaders on private and public law practice with children and families

This proposed judgement structure broadly reflects the existing framework, except that we propose to make a single national judgement about the impact of leaders, rather than the previous approach where we judged local leadership and national leadership separately. This approach is to reflect the reduced duration of the new inspections and a more coherent and focused evaluation of leadership.

While individual service areas (Cafcass’s operational units) will not now receive a graded judgement, HMI will feed back to each area its key strengths and areas for improvement at the end of each visit during the inspection.

Proposal 4: focused visits

We propose to complete a focused visit at least once between judgement inspections.

A focused visit will be a 2-day event, with small teams of inspectors deployed across a sample of geographical areas.

We propose to report on focused visits through a published letter that sets out the main strengths of the service and areas for further improvement (and, if necessary, any areas for priority actions). We do not propose to make a judgement on the 4-point scale.

The principal focus will be the quality and impact of practice (either public, private or both) with children and families. However, we do not propose to prescribe a list of topic areas for focused visits. Instead, we will consider the following factors when deciding the focus of the visits:

• a clear link to Cafcass’s statutory functions
• previous inspection outcomes and Cafcass’s current improvement priorities
• information and intelligence received since the last judgement inspection or focused visit

Proposal 5: self-evaluation of practice

Cafcass’s self-evaluation of the quality of frontline social work practice will play an important role in informing when we carry out an inspection and, in the case of focused visits, the topic of the inspection.

We propose that Cafcass should share its self-evaluation with us annually. For the self-evaluation to provide us with sufficient information to prepare for the inspection, it would need to set out:

• what Cafcass knows about the quality of its social work practice in both private and public law
• how Cafcass knows this
• Cafcass’s strengths and its priorities for improving social work practice
• who was involved in carrying out and agreeing the self-evaluation

We will use this information to inform our inspection planning. We do not intend to ask the Ministry of Justice to create regulations to require this, because continuous self-assessment is already considered standard good practice in children’s social care. If Cafcass chooses not to provide us with its self-evaluation, the lack of up-to-date information available to us would be a factor in deciding when we next inspect. Cafcass may choose to provide an update at any time to inform our inspection planning and reflect any significant changes. The inspection framework will set an expectation that Cafcass will provide an update at the point when an inspection is announced.

Cafcass should lead the design of its approach to self-evaluation. The self-evaluation should support improvement of the organisation and not be produced solely for the inspection. For the self-evaluation to be effective for the purpose of inspection, it will need to include the information listed in the bullets above.

Grade descriptors: judgement inspection

The proposed grade descriptors for the 2 practice judgements (private and public law) are the same as the existing grade descriptors, with the addition of criteria about first-line management supervision and oversight of practice.

The judgement on the impact of leaders covers all leaders in Cafcass and aligns with the approach in local authority inspection.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass private law practice with children and families

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass private law practice with families are likely to be judged as good if the following apply.

• Children and young people’s welfare is safeguarded and promoted through the actions and recommendations of Cafcass.
• The family court is given high-quality advice and/or recommendations about applications made to it in private law proceedings, at first and all subsequent hearings where appropriate.
• Children and young people, and their parents, carers and families, are provided with appropriate information, advice and other support during proceedings.
• Delay in allocation, work carried out with families and filing with the court is appropriately avoided and in line with court-set hearing dates.
• Effective initial risk assessment and screening of cases are carried out. Safeguarding letters are timely, proportionate, and focused on the safety and protection of children. The letters provide appropriate advice about the next steps, ensuring the child’s best interests and about the need for future Cafcass involvement.
• Effective assessment and planned direct work with children, young people and their families/carers are carried out promptly. Children know what is happening to them and why. Individualised plans are shared with the parties, and they are proportionate and focused on the issues identified by the court.
• Children and young people who are the subject of orders of the court are seen, and seen alone, provided this is in their best interests and taking account of the complexity of the case.
• Cafcass practitioners’ practice in court is consistent with the Child Arrangements Programme (Practice direction 12B – Child Arrangements Programme (a Practice Direction made by the President of the Family Division)). It demonstrates constructive working relationships with the judiciary and court officials, and is purposeful, equitable to each party and recognises the distinct role of Cafcass within the family court.
• Reports to the court, including oral reporting, include information relevant to the proceedings, appropriate analysis and recommendations. Written recommendations flow from the body of the report. They are made by Cafcass practitioners with suitable social work qualifications and experience, and by student social workers, who carry out assessments under the required level of supervision.
• If it is appropriate and in children’s interests, and when it supports and promotes children’s welfare, recommendations to court are shared with all parties in advance of the day and this is recorded.
• Case recording is coherent, timely and sufficiently comprehensive to reflect the work carried out, including the outcome of the assessment. It equitably reflects the views of parties and children and young people.
• Information-sharing between agencies and professionals is lawful, timely, specific and effective.
• Staff are suitably skilled, effectively trained and supervised, and the quality of their practice improves. Management oversight of practice, including scrutiny of practice by senior managers, is established, systematic, used to improve the quality of assessment and advice to the courts, and effective in tackling weaknesses and overcoming barriers to improvement.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass private law practice with families are likely to be judged outstanding if they meet the criteria for good and the following applies.

• Practice is consistently better than good and consistently ensures that the court is able to make its decisions about the best outcomes for children and young people.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass private law practice with families are likely to be judged requires improvement to be good if the following applies.

• ‘Good’ private law practice is not sufficiently in place. However, there are no widespread or serious failures or unnecessary delays attributable to Cafcass that result in children’s welfare not being safeguarded and promoted.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass private law practice with families are likely to be judged inadequate if the following applies.

• There are widespread or serious failures, including unnecessary delay in identifying solutions that are most likely to be sustainable for children and which result in children’s welfare not being safeguarded and promoted.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass public law practice with children and families

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass public law practice with families are likely to be judged good if the following apply.

• Children and young people’s welfare is safeguarded and is promoted through the actions and recommendations of children’s guardians.
• Children’s best interests remain central to the proceedings.
• Children’s guardians give the family court high-quality advice on any application made to it in public law proceedings – at the first case management hearing and subsequent hearings – where the guardian’s advice is required by the court.
• Children and young people are appropriately represented in family proceedings or, if appropriate, enabled to instruct their own legal representative.
• Children and young people, and their parents, carers and families, are provided with appropriate information, advice and other support during proceedings.
• Cafcass does not contribute to avoidable delay and challenges other agencies when delay is identified.
• Cafcass involves independent reviewing officers regularly to improve the plans for children and ensure that children’s needs and wishes have been properly understood.
• When children’s guardians are involved in local authority pre-proceedings work, they provide appropriate advice and monitoring.
• Children’s guardians quickly establish an understanding of the child’s needs, wishes and feelings. They provide the court with analysis of the child’s lived experiences early and throughout the proceedings. Children understand what is happening to them and why.
• Effective assessment and planned direct work with children, young people and their families/carers are carried out that provide added value to the work of the local authority and the courts.
• There are effective working relationships between children’s guardians and social workers and all parties.
• Children and young people who are the subject of care and supervision proceedings are seen alone by their children’s guardian, proportionate to the needs and complexity of the case (if the child is not seen, the reasons are recorded). Children’s guardians build effective engagement with the child in accordance with Cafcass’s functions and duties.
• Cafcass practitioners’ practice in court is consistent with the Public Law Outline (practice direction issued by the President of the Family Division regarding care and supervision proceedings under part 4 of the Children Act 1989), demonstrates constructive working relationships with the judiciary and court officials and is purposeful and equitable to all parties.
• Reports to the court, including oral reporting, include information that is relevant to the proceedings and contain appropriate analysis and recommendations. Written recommendations flow from the body of the report and are made by children’s guardians who are skilled and suitably qualified in social work.
• The recommendations and advice of children’s guardians in care, supervision and secure proceedings add value to the work of the local authority and other expert advice to the court. Expert advice from children’s guardians reduces the need for appointments of further experts.
• Case recording is coherent, timely, sufficiently comprehensive to reflect the work carried out and the outcome of the assessment, and balanced and fair to the adult parties.
• Information-sharing between agencies and professionals is lawful, timely, specific and effective.
• Children’s guardians liaise and work effectively throughout proceedings with independent reviewing officers and provide a handover at the end of proceedings to ensure continuity of challenge to the local authority’s future planning for children.
• Staff are suitably skilled and effectively trained and supervised. The quality of their practice continually improves in response to training. Management oversight of practice, including practice scrutiny by senior managers, is established and systematic. It is used to improve the quality of assessment and advice to the courts and is effective in tackling weaknesses and overcoming barriers to improvement.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass public law practice with families are likely to be judged outstanding if the following applies.

• The response to the needs of children and families involved in public law proceedings and the quality of advice to the family court meet the criteria for ‘good’, as outlined above, are consistently better than good and consistently ensure that the court is able to make its decisions about the best outcomes for children and young people.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass public law practice with families are likely to be judged requires improvement to be good if the following applies.

• ‘Good’ public law practice is not sufficiently in place. However, there are no widespread or serious failures or unnecessary delays attributable to Cafcass that result in children’s welfare not being safeguarded and promoted.

The quality and effectiveness of Cafcass public law practice with families are likely to be judged inadequate if the following applies.

• There are widespread or serious failures, including unnecessary delays attributable to Cafcass (and not adequately challenged), in identifying plans for children and which result in children’s welfare not being safeguarded and promoted.

The impact of leaders on private and public law practice with children and families

The impact of leaders on private and public law practice with families is likely to be judged good if the following apply.

• Leaders at all levels prioritise, identify and implement ambitious strategies to provide family court social work services that influence and respond to the national policy agenda, and to drive improvement in practice.
• Leaders use their influence externally to effectively promote the best interests of children and young people in the national family justice system, including tackling delay in making permanent arrangements for children and young people.
• The Cafcass Board provides effective strategic leadership, which delivers a clear vision that informs the organisation’s strategic direction and priorities and holds the organisation to account.
• Cafcass senior and local leaders implement policy that maintains the best interests of children and the ‘paramountcy principle’^{[footnote 1]}, while ensuring that there is an appropriate relationship between demand, resources, performance and quality. They exercise effective management oversight and are effective in tackling weaknesses and overcoming barriers to improvement.
• Leaders demonstrate that there are clear lines of accountability between local delivery and the national organisation.
• Leaders are proactive and effectively engaged with all relevant partnership organisations, including the family court, judiciary at all levels, local authorities, groups who represent child and adult Cafcass users, local safeguarding partnership arrangements and local and national family justice boards.

Learning culture

• Staff at all levels work in a culture that is challenging as well as supportive and that supports improvement, safeguards the welfare of children and promotes diversity and inclusion.
• Cafcass responds appropriately, effectively and quickly to areas for development, service deficiencies and new demands, and is resilient when presented with new challenges. The organisation’s self-evaluation of practice is accurate.
• Cafcass can demonstrate evidence of practice that is informed and sustainably improved by feedback, research and intelligence about the quality of services. Cafcass learns from children’s and families’ complaints and feedback.
• There is an effective response to equality issues such as race, religion and belief, sex, age, sexual orientation and disability, both in terms of the workforce and in how Cafcass fulfils its statutory functions, including the public sector equality duty. Commissioning of services is intelligence-based, is supported by robust needs assessments, is effectively monitored and provides services that local courts consistently use to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are the subject of family proceedings.

Performance management

• Performance management supports improvement of the quality of practice across the organisation, including the quality assurance of reports to the court. Delay for children is regularly reviewed and action taken when it is needed.
• Cafcass’s performance targets are child-focused and stretch the organisation’s performance, rate of continuous improvement and delivery of services to children. Leaders identify and address negative trends in performance and sustain improvement. The organisation successfully addresses performance issues and/or there is evidence of significant improvement in performance and quality in the short term. There is demonstrable capacity to sustain this improvement.

Workforce

• Organisational development and the national improvement service (which supports practice improvement through a team of improvement managers) provide a sufficient, skilled, diverse and suitably experienced workforce able to respond to the demands placed on Cafcass.
• There is strong leadership on issues of race, religion and belief, sex, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, marriage, gender reassignment and disability, both in terms of the workforce and how Cafcass fulfils its statutory functions, including the public sector equality duty.
• Cafcass’s practice is timely, proportionate to need, fair, balanced and delivered in accordance with professional social work standards.

The impact of leaders on private and public law practice with families is likely to be judged outstanding if the following applies.

• In addition to meeting the requirements of a ‘good’ judgement, there is evidence that leaders and managers are confident, ambitious and influential in changing the lives of children in family proceedings. They innovate and generate creative ideas to sustain the highest-quality services for children and families. They know their strengths and weaknesses well and both respond to and are resilient to new challenges. Professional relationships between Cafcass and its partner organisations are mature and well developed. Accountabilities are embedded and result in confident, regular evaluation and improvement in the quality of advice given to the family courts.

The impact of leaders on private and public law practice with families is likely to be judged requires improvement to be good if the following applies.

• Any widespread or serious failures have been identified by Cafcass and are being effectively addressed, but the characteristics of good leadership are not consistently in place.

The impact of leaders on private and public law practice with families is likely to be judged inadequate if the following applies.

• Either of the 2 practice judgements is inadequate and leaders and managers have not been able to demonstrate sufficient understanding of the failure. Leaders and managers have been ineffective in prioritising challenging weak practice and making improvements.

1. Under section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989, where the court is determining any issue relating to the upbringing of a child or the administration of a child’s property, the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration. This paramountcy principle makes family proceedings a unique form of litigation. ↩