CAFCASS Moves to Private Law

Julie Doughty, Cardiff Law School. In October 2005 the Children and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) released a consultation paper Every Day Matters: New Directions for CAFCASS", which sets out how the organisation intends to improve its service. The aim is to provide a guaranteed early intervention service without any delays or backlogs in the allocation of CAFCASS officers to cases from April 2007 and to provide a continuum of services. This new professional strategy is based on a proposed reallocation of resources from public law to private law cases, so that an increased amount of time will be spent overall by the workforce on inter family disputes (mainly Children Act 1989, s 8 applications for residence and contact) than at present. Correspondingly less time will be spent on care applications and other public law proceedings. The author looks at studies and articles that have been written on the representation of children in private law and public law proceedings. See January [2006] Fam Law 36 for the full article.

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