SUMMARY OF PEOPLE/ORGANISATIONS REPRESENTED

  1.  EPC (and the other member organizations/representatives of CEP) represent parents—mothers, fathers and grandparents whose role in their children's lives has been terminated or limited by the failure of the family justice system to support them in a timely and effective way. EPC also speaks for our children—the children of broken homes whose welfare suffers as a consequence of the system's failings. Most of us have had direct and personal experience of the workings of CAFCASS. Our experiences on the whole have been horrendous.

  2.  EPC is key stakeholder in the ongoing CAFCASS consultations, as is CEP. Collectively we represent thousands of people who are, in effect, the customers of CAFCASS—customers who have difficulty finding one good word to say about CAFCASS. Our website receives over 100,000 visits a year. We are the recipient of a constant stream of complaints about CAFCASS.

  3.  Both EPC and CEP are advocates of shared parenting as the best regime for the children of fit parents after the parents separate. We are campaigning for equal treatment of both fit parents by the family justice system. Equal treatment is key to serving the welfare of the children in these cases and to respecting the fundamental Human Rights of the parents.

  4.  For further information on EPC please visit our website at: www.EqualParenting.org For further information on CEP and its constituents, please visit the Coalition's site at: http://coalition.equalparenting.org

ABOUT THE WITNESS/AUTHOR OF THIS SUBMISSION

  5.  My name is Tony Coe. I am President of EPC and a member of the AFCC—Association of Family Court & Community Professionals. AFCC, headquartered in USA, is an international and interdisciplinary association of family court professionals dedicated to the constructive resolution of family disputes. Members include judges, lawyers, mediators, mental health professionals, court administrators, researchers, educators and other professionals who work with families in conflict.

  6.  I write frequently on post separation parenting and speak at international conferences, mainly focusing on how the UK family justice system has fallen 20 years behind Best Practice jurisdictions. Over the past few years EPC has been researching these jurisdictions and has provided valuable materials both to CAFCASS and LCD as to how effective improvements could be introduced to help children and families.

  7.  This research led to the production of our Shared Parenting Policy Document which is attached hereto. It sets out a proven model for helping parents and children through the family transition occasioned by parental separation. It is the embodiment of what we have been saying to CAFCASS since they launched as an organization. It has been favourably received by the Family Law Minister, Rosie Winterton.

  8.  It will be noted that I am quoted in the LCD sub-committee report entitled "Making Contact Work", the project so ably conducted by Sir Nicholas Wall and his excellent team. That landmark report concluded that there was widespread dissatisfaction with our family justice system. A copy of EPC's submission, which bears heavily on CAFCASS's role, is attached hereto.

COMMENTS IN RELATION TO CAFCASS'S SIX KEY OBJECTIVES

  9.  My comments, in this submission for EPC/CEP, focus exclusively on private law cases because EPC/CEP largely represent ordinary parents who have been excluded from their children's lives for no good reason. I leave the public law aspects to those more qualified by experience to speak to them.

  10.  We agree with the President of the Family Division, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, who said emphatically at the recent joint SFLA/FLBA conference that the family justice system is failing children and families in the private law arena. At the same conference, practitioners expressed considerable frustration with the system. CAFCASS is a massive contributor to the system's failures. It has failed abjectly in all of its six key objectives.

  11.  Leading up to its launch, I was part of the CAFCASS User Group that was presided over by David Lye. This was one of several stakeholder groups whose feedback was to inform CAFCASS's methodologies. My group—which included people who were on the opposite side of the argument—came to a consensus in the form of a simple one page document. A copy of that document is appended hereto. Simply put, it records the consensus the group reached that shared parenting ought to be the default arrangement where both parents are fit parents.

  12.  What persuaded people on the other side of our argument to reach this agreement? Well, the opponents of our position (that both fit parents should be treated equally by the law in the parenting of their children) were mainly women who had every reason to oppose (as they perceived it) any opportunity for men, who might hurt women and children, to have more contact. They included organizations like Women's Aid who were dealing every day with female victims of violence. We needed to hear their perspective, but they also needed to hear from us about all the fit parents who were being excluded as parents without cause. They were particularly impressed that our group contained excluded mothers. Hence the consensus on shared parenting as the starting point unless there was a serious barrier, such as violence or abuse.

  13.  Whilst one might be forgiven for thinking that this would be common-sense, it is foreign thinking to most CAFCASS Officers. Most of them, according to our members' daily experiences, do nothing to support the children's relationship with perfectly fit non-resident parents. Quite the opposite—many of them routinely discriminate against non-resident parents. Indeed, many aid and abet hostile resident parents (unwittingly or purposefully) in sidelining and denigrating non-resident parents. This causes untold misery and collateral damage.

  14.  Family court judges rely heavily on the recommendations of CAFCASS Officers. Where Officers recommend that there should be no contact order, or paltry contact, the judge will almost certainly simply go along with this advice. Who is s/he to question the "expert"? But they are not experts. It is impossible to discern in most cases any sound methodology or knowledge-base by reference to which Officers have arrived at their conclusions. This is because they have no methodology or training in the role they are supposed to be fulfilling; nor are they required to support their recommendations by reference to any research data. Even their factual findings are frequently wrong or loaded in favour of one parent.

  15.  CAFCASS Officers can best be described as "unconscious incompetents"—that is to say they are people who don't even know that they don't even know what they are doing. Yet they are encouraged to think of themselves as "the experts" when nothing could be further from the truth. It has been said with considerable justification that they have less training than traffic wardens. The consequences for the children and families whose lives they touch are disturbing.

  16.  CAFCASS does not know what its role in private law disputes is supposed to be. Many Officers believe that their role is merely to write reports for court, but not to do anything to support contact. I liken this to the Fire Brigade turning up to the scene of a fire, but then sitting outside in their engine writing a report on how the building is being consumed by fire! CONCLUSION: the house has now burnt to the ground and is a write-off. CAFCASS, in spite of its title, does nothing to provide a "support service" to families.

  17.  Others CAFCASS staff believe they should write a report of the facts, leaving the conclusions to the judge. Still others work to conciliate. There is no consistency of approach. There are no system-wide agreed guidelines. There is no training for any of these functions. There is no concept of educating parents as to the importance to the children of keeping both parents. Yet this is regarded as fundamental in Best Practice jurisdictions. Most Officers have no mediation skills, when ADR has been used successfully for many years as a means of sparing families the misery of adversarial court proceedings.

  18.  There is no evaluation of the performance of CAFCASS Officers—by outcome or any other measure. They do not bother to consult parents about what they thought of their service. In short, CAFCASS shows not the slightest sign of caring about the outcomes for children and families.

  19.  CAFCASS Officers may be trained in something—social or probation work perhaps—but they are NOT trained to make recommendations to courts about appropriate contact and residence arrangements after parental separation in any given set of circumstances. Yet CAFCASS managers allow these people to make recommendations day in day out in family courts—recommendations that dictate the future lives of countless children, parents, grandparents and other family members.

  20.  Their power is awesome. Their discretion is unfettered. They are subject to no guidelines. Their conclusions are based on nothing more than their personal biases. In our experience, perversely, many CAFCASS Officers believe that a non-resident parent can only continue as a parent if the resident parent is prepared to cooperate. They do not regard non-resident parents as real parents. They routinely support resident parents and abandon non-resident parents.

  21.  The non-resident parent is normally the father, but the number of excluded non-resident mothers is on the increase. Too many CAFCASS Officers treat non-resident parents with contempt. When they are supported in such disgraceful conduct (as they are) even by senior members of the organization, like CAFCASS's Legal Director, Charles Prest, where is the impetus for any improvement?

  22.  Many CAFCASS Officers do not believe in shared residence even though it was Parliament's clear, recorded intention that the Children Act 1989 should lead to shared residence being the common form of order. Many have never once made a recommendation for a shared residence order. Many do not even know what the term means.

  23.  The beauty of Parliament's intention was that it would equalise both fit parents. Parliament wanted an end to two classes of parent—a superior custodial parent and an inferior visiting parent or "contact"" parent. Wisely, Parliament wanted an end to children being fought over like possessions. Awarding residence to both fit parents via a shared residence order achieved equal status for each parent. Parliament's thinking was (all that time ago) at the cutting edge of modern family law, but its intention has been sabotaged by CAFCASS Officers.

  24.  When the Chairman of CAFCASS, Anthony Hewson, OBE took up his post I was one his first visitors. I met him amid a forest of unboxed computers at their then HQ in Victoria. I was astounded that the consensus document (referred to in paragraph 12 above) had not reached him. It was then clear that the hard work done by the pre-CAFCASS launch consultation groups had been squandered through bureaucratic incompetence.

  25.  I have been a strong supporter of Mr Hewson. He is a kind, empathetic man of transparent honesty. He is not capable of obfuscation. For this reason, I believe his evidence will be of enormous value in this inquiry. However, I am personally disappointed with how little Mr Hewson has been able to achieve since his appointment. He and I have had intensive discussions—particularly in recent months—and he tells me that he has been persuaded of the rightness of our case. Yet there has been no visible progress whatever towards a remedy.

  26.  I am especially disappointed in the fact that Mr Hewson's personal and specific assurances to me (and others) concerning the so-called consultation process have been broken. It is to his credit that he has accepted this fact and apologized for it, but we do not feel consulted. We feel that we have been used as window dressing while CAFCASS has pretended to go through a process of consultation.

  27.  Specifically stakeholders were assured that there would be proper consultation over installing a complaints procedure and proper standards. Mr Hewson assured us that (a) our points of view would be listened to and considered and (b) CAFCASS would come back in response stating:

—  The points they agreed with and would implement;

—  The ones they rejected and why they had rejected them.

  28.  Not only has this not occurred but I had to tell Mr Hewson that it had not occurred. This came as a shock to him. I believe, from this and many conversations I have had with him, that Mr Hewson and his Board are far too remote from CAFCASS operations. In reality, they have little idea about what is going on in the trenches where our members and their children are bleeding and dying. I believe this is why there is so little sense of urgency about addressing our concerns. The Board has moved at a glacial pace and then wonders why our members want to name and shame CAFCASS Officers and managers who break every law of natural justice. This cannot be allowed to continue.

  29.  The excuse that CAFCASS created and then had to solve a major dispute with its workforce has worn very thin indeed. The lack of resources (now solved I am told) would be a more persuasive defence if CAFCASS showed any sign of knowing where it should be investing those resources. The fact is CAFCASS is using its resources to prop up the status quo and to cocoon its current staff in a fortress of unaccountability. I do not think Mr Hewson is doing this deliberately. It is, in my view, being done behind his back by people so senior that he feels duty bound to defend them. It is perhaps not difficult to pull the wool over the eyes of a chairman (even one as able as Mr Hewson) who works only two days a week for an organization.

  30.  Mr Hewson recently told me that a new complaints procedure and standards were about to be published. We have not had sight of either. He now accepts that our feedback submissions received no response from CAFCASS. He was unable to tell me whether our submissions had even been considered. He accepts that my Vice President, Paul Duffield, made oral submissions at a consultation workshop which received a round of applause from delegates. He accepts that CAFCASS were to get back to Mr Duffield and other delegates, but didn't.

  31.  Mr Hewson accepts that the complaints procedure was in fact nothing of the kind. It was merely a device for protecting CAFCASS Officers. In reality complaints are fobbed off, usually on the basis that you can only raise them in court. This is tantamount to the Health Service only being prepared to entertain a complaint once the patient is dead! In any event family court judges have made plain that they are not interested in entertaining complaints against CAFCASS. This leaves wronged parents with no redress.

  32.  Mr Hewson tells me CAFCASS is about to introduce a training scheme for Officers. No information about this training has been forthcoming. Who has decided the content of this training programme? Who will deliver it? How will it address our concerns? Why has all this information been kept from stakeholders?

  33.  Mr Hewson has said publicly that it is "a disgrace" that proven methodologies from overseas Best Practice jurisdictions have not been examined by CAFCASS. I agree, but still no steps have been taken to introduce proven methodologies for helping families in transition. I have asked a dozen times, what is the sense in re-inventing the wheel? I am constantly told I am "pushing on an open door", but nothing ever gets done to implement simple, cost-effective strategies that have been working successfully for children and families for decades in other jurisdictions.

  34.  A visiting senior judge from Florida last year was staggered at the backward attitude of CAFCASS Officers he conversed with at a London conference on contact issues—this same mentality our members have to contend with every day. Florida, like many North American jurisdictions has long operated a shared parenting statute.

  35.  CAFCASS itself has no clear idea of what its role should be in private law cases. It is a ship with no rudder. Until it resolves that core issue it will go on failing families and children. Indeed, it will go on violating the Human Rights of the children and parents whose lives it touches in terms of (inter alia):

—  Their right to a fair hearing (Article 6)

—  Their right to respect for their family life (Article 8)

  36.  CAFCASS does not give non-resident parents a fair hearing. It does not give children a fair hearing. It pretends to be attuned to the voice of the child. Listening (really listening) to children requires a high level of skill, especially when children have been alienated against a parent. CAFCASS Officers do not possess this skill. On the whole they merely report what children told them at a particular point in time in a given set of circumstances. Worse they do not have a clue when to involve an external expert—a child psychiatrist or psychologist for example.

  37.  CAFCASS, by virtue of the manner in which its Officers apply their unfettered discretion, arbitrarily interferes with the family lives of children and non-resident parents. It does so by failing to support their relationships in circumstances where resident parents are obstructing those relationships. It gives up (too early or all together) on re-unifying children and their excluded parents. It provides the parents it has failed with no effective remedy. In spite of lip service to the contrary, it is a "couldn't care less" organization.

  38.  If CAFCASS had bothered to lift a finger to inform its Officers as to global Best Practice it would have established that early intervention is the key to successful outcomes—not writing (often inaccurate) reports that inflame the relations between the parents. It would have discovered the vital importance of acting without delay—that prevention is better than cure.

  39.  Consequently children are losing one fit parent for no good reason. Parents are missing out on their children's most precious childhood years. Grandparents are losing out. For many it is worse than losing a child to death for there can be no closure—only year after year of enforced, agonizing separation from beloved children who may live around the corner. The damage to the families and to Society goes on and on.

  40.  Society loses out in all sorts of obvious ways. Dysfunctional children grow into dysfunctional adults and the cycle is perpetuated. Disputes that could have been easily resolved go on for years draining the finances of the parties and/or the public purse. Avoidable health problems and suicides are all part of the cocktail of misery that CAFCASS is responsible for.

  41.  Even Mr Hewson, in an effort to defend the indefensible, has bought into the LCD line, "Well it's not all our fault. Most parents manage to agree their own children's arrangements!". Yes, we know that—most ships don't sink, but that does not mean ship owners should not be required to provide lifeboats. We are interested in the parents and children drowning for want of lifeboats. The disputed cases are the ones we are interested in. If one parent refuses to be reasonable, how can the other effect an agreement? One child losing a fit parent is one child too many. One fit parent losing their children is one parent too many.

  42.  The majority of CAFCASS Officers and managers are so set in their ways that they will fight tooth and nail to resist the common-sense reforms that we are seeking. They have a stranglehold over the family justice system, over Mr Hewson and his Board. They want to remain accountable to nobody. I am reminded of the truism, "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." CAFCASS Officers enjoy absolute power. This must be stripped away.

  43.  CAFCASS Officers are not gender neutral. I attach EPC's recent press release regarding NAPO's blatant sexism. I have confronted Mr Hewson about this and he says, in effect, that NAPO's policy is their business and that CAFCASS will not tolerate gender-bias. With all due respect to Mr Hewson, this is a "cop out". CAFCASS Officers belong to NAPO. Would CAFCASS allow its Officers to belong to a trade union that supported racism? Of course not. The lameness of the employer's position over this issue vividly demonstrates that the staff are managing the CAFCASS Board, rather than the other way round. Furthermore, CAFCASS has no systems in place to safeguard against gender-bias, even when their employees' belong to a trade union that openly promotes gender-bias in family court work.

  44.  A major culture change within CAFCASS has to be achieved so that fit parents are not prevented from parenting their children simply because they have separated from the other parent. We have been trying to help CAFCASS since its inception by bringing to it proven techniques and resources that have the blessing of judges and child welfare experts in Best Practice jurisdictions. How much longer must our members' lives be torn apart by the sheer incompetence and bigotry of CAFCASS staff?

  45.  EPC/CEP are willing to bring cases before this Select Committee to demonstrate the reality of CAFCASS's failures to (a) meet its six key objectives and (b) comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.

  46.  It remains a major concern that no members of the CAFCASS Board has direct experience of having lost his or her children as a direct consequence of the failings of our family justice system—the very failings that the President of the Family Division has highlighted. This is a fatal flaw that must be corrected.

  47.  May it please this Committee; I am at its disposal to attend before it to give oral evidence.

Tony Coe

President

Equal Parenting Council

March 2003