Oct 31 2005 Every Day Matters?
NEW directions for Cafcass - A consultation paper on a
new professional and organisational strategy direction:- Please
Read: Cafcass PDF
CAFCASS
STATEMENT TO FATHERS ONLY? OPEN LETTER TO GROUPS
REPRESENTING THE INTERESTS OF FATHERS IN PRIVATE LAW? Shouldn't this
say all parents not just fathers! I wonder if these so called support
groups F4J, FNF, Fathers Direct, ECT have consulted their membership on this complete pack of hype
and tripe, if not then the
leaders of these groups should be ashamed of themselves.
Please reply to this hype and
tripe
The Family Court proceedings and CAFCASS leave
thousands of children in Wales each year fatherless, Cafcass leaves
a trail of heartache and confusion systematically removing
caring fathers from their loved ones destroying deep bonded and
loving relationships with the swish of a pen writing away years of
father child development. The Unqualified Cafcass
office was set up under the Criminal Justice and
Court Services Act 2000,prescribed by the act is CAFCASS looks after
solely the interests of children involved in the family court
proceedings when parents who are separating or divorcing can't agree
on contact arrangements for their children, and then advises the
courts on what it considers to be in the children's best interests.
Family courts are deeply secretive
places. Every year in England
and Wales, the parents of some 200,000 children pass through them.
Judges are free to make whatever comments about these parents'
behaviour or parenting they see fit and to make whatever orders they
consider appropriate about the children's future.
Their powers include the
right to stop a parent seeing their child for any reason. (Unmarried
fathers have no rights in law to see their own children at all,
unless they can get a Parental Responsibility Order which gives them
the same status as a married man.)
There
are no guidelines for post-divorce contact with children.
It is almost impossible to appeal against decisions and there is no
proper system for complaints. No one knows how - or if - the system
is working since there are no case studies of the first one million
cases which have been dealt with.
In making their
decisions, judges rely heavily on welfare reports drawn up by
reporting officers. Formerly known as court welfare officers called
cafcass reporters these influential figures advise judges on where
children should live and how often the non-resident parent should be
allowed see them. Their recommendations are usually
rubber-stamped.
Parental
Alienation
The horrors of Cafcass the Children and Family
Court Advisory Support Service.
1.The majority of Cafcass Officers are
ex
probation officers used to dealing with hardened/petty
criminals.
2.1 in 7 Cafcass officers as
NOT received
any training.
3.Cafcass officers have
NO formal
qualifications.
4.Shockingly, Cafcass officers training
consists of just one 2 half-day course – less than a Traffic Warden.
There is
NO official training budget whatsoever.
5.Cafcass has NO defined guidelines and
in 2007 still
NO proper complaints procedure.
6.Cafcass
keep NO records and do not
research into the outcomes of the cases they have been involved in
(e.g. figures on children's suicide and teenage pregnancy five years
after CAFCASS involvement). This means they have NO way of knowing
whether they are achieving the best outcomes for children and their
parents.
7.To further compound problems,
massive numbers
of CWOs are leaving because of these problems. Cafcass faces
a major recruitment crisis.
8.According to Dr Buchanan, ex-Head of the Family
Division Research Team at Oxford University,
Cafcass handles
around 40,000 cases each year affecting an estimated 80 – 120,000
children per annum.
9.This equates to
over a million children in the
past decade alone.
10.According to Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss,
once President of the Family Division,
40% of fathers lose contact with
their children after 2 years.
.gif){kind=logo}
