Making sure that the voice of the child is heard lies at the heart of the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (Cafcass). It informs every aspect of the organisation, from the family court advisers who work on the frontline to the National Commissioning Team (NCT).
As a small team of just nine people, the NCT’s job is to ensure that the family court advisers can recommend a tailored package of support to courts and service users. These include Child Contact Interventions (CCIs), the Separated Parents Information Programme (SPIP), which helps parents to recognise and focus on the needs of their children during a separation, and the Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programme (DAPP). But it also has a wider remit to look at ways it can make the services better – even more child-focused – while ensuring that safeguarding remains paramount.
“We listen to parents’ feedback and consult with our family court advisers about what kind of programmes they would like, and what they think is going to meet the demands and needs at both local and national levels,” says assistant director Carole Goodman. “But we also constantly look at different ways to engage with our external partners – to help them be resilient and viable – and at ways we can innovate, encourage and do things differently.”
That focus on the child is reflected in the team’s commissioning practices. Over the past two years, the NCT has taken a new slant. “We honed in on making providers who wanted to tender for our services really think about how to put the voice of the child at the heart of everything,” says Goodman. “Even if they were working with parents and not necessarily having direct engagement with the children.”
Encouraging providers to work smarter and suggesting ways to make a service more efficient, benefits everyone. The NCT’s role in creating partnerships between organisations, for example, in both the voluntary and private sector, has proved successful in improving services across large geographical areas, such as Yorkshire and Cornwall. “In terms of family courts and the number of applications, demand is going up,” says Volker Buck, head of national commissioning. “So we should follow that demand. But when you are managing contracts, you have to be smart. Bringing organisations together is important for us – and for them.”
Growing demand means more pressure on services, making the NCT’s remit to innovate and look outside the organisation for solutions vital. For example, about 25,000 parents go through the SPIP every year. “The SPIP programme,” says Buck, “covers the key principles of how to manage conflict and difficulties between separated parents and is applicable to a large group of separated parents going through the court system. But we want to tailor things more specifically to individuals’ needs.”
“We are starting to develop modular digital content where parents can ‘pick and choose’ from a range of examples and exercises to take into account their individual needs, such as how to deal with the impact of separation on young children versus teenagers.
“We are looking at the digital side, but not just having digital for the sake of it. It’s a real challenge to identify a solution, to test, to innovate and do things a bit differently. But parenting in the 21st century is different than it was even 20 years ago. So the time is right to look at different paths.”
The NCT’s work creating working relationships with other organisations is key here, too. Cafcass’ Co-Parent Hub is a partnership with OnePlusOne, a charity that helps people tackle relationship issues. “The concept was to have something online that we could direct parents to,” says Goodman. “Something that could actually help them assess and find out how they’re feeling about the separation and the other partner, and how this might impact the children.
“When parents separate it is a very tense, very emotional situation, and sometimes there is a danger that children can get lost in the turmoil. We want to develop support systems that parents can tap into when they’re ready, which helps us work with them to reach the best decisions for their children.”
Bringing people together in the real world, as well as online, is also vital. Cafcass recently co-hosted a co-parenting conference with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, attended by more than 150 sector professionals. Its aim – to bring together family justice, health and social care professionals to help improve services – paid off. About 100 of the 130 attendees at the conference signed up for the next stage, a roundtable event to look at forming a national alliance of the various sectors and how that might work in practice.
“One of the most moving moments of the conference,” says Goodman, “was having young people telling us about their experience of being in a situation where their parents had separated, what it felt like for them and what they would like to see happen. Voices like that are so powerful. It made us all stop and reflect and remember why we’re doing this, and who we are doing it for.”
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