I am very grateful to chair this seminar arranged by Children law UK on the Review of the Child Care Proceedings System in England and Wales.
The position today is that the detail of the necessary changes to court proceedings, and in particular the content of an amended Judicial Protocol have yet to be made clear as this is dependent on the work of a number of interlocking teams who are still looking at particular aspects of Children Act cases.
The proposals in the report of the Child Care Proceedings Review are very much along the lines of the judiciary’s suggestions in last year’s Thematic Review of the Public Law Protocol. That judicial review was in the course of preparation at the time the Ministerial Child Care Review was announced and we broadened its scope and its recommendations for change in order to take in the matters which we, the judiciary, hoped the Child Care Review would identify as roads to improvement. The Opportunity was too good to miss, not least because it gave the judiciary, in the light of experience, the chance to make suggestions in relation to local authority practice which is usually no business of ours, but which has such an important effect on the progress and management of care proceedings.
Broadly the proposals of the Child Care Review are for 3 key elements:
(1) a Pre-Proceedings Protocol in the form of new statutory guidance, as it is called in the review covering the procedure to be followed and work to be done by local authorities before proceedings are issued, including identification of possible alternative carers within the extended family so as to enable there to take place an early and effective directions hearing at which vigorous and comprehensive case management decisions are taken. I have had the advantage of seeing the paper which Margaret Wilson, the chair of the Greater London Family Panel, will present this afternoon. I echo her desire on the part of the judiciary to ensure that parents are involved at an early stage and that matters are properly explained to them. This may involve the avoidance of proceedings altogether. But, in any event, it is right that applications should be made only after all safe appropriate alternatives have been explored.
I understand that the Law Society has indicated that it hopes to run a pilot in conjunction with the LSC to provide public funding for parents to help them to participate in what is hoped to be an inclusive process, whereby agreements between parties and local authorities can be reached and arrangements put into place which will protect the child sufficiently to avoid the need for court proceedings completely. That is excellent to hear and I very much hope that it will proceed.
(2) A comprehensive early directions hearing at which all aspects of the case are, so far as possible, reviewed and assessed in advance, the issues analysed and directions given, based on an agenda contained in:
(3) The overall Case Plan which the Local Authority will have been obliged to produce and circulate in advance to the other parties, in relation to which submissions can be made at the directions hearing.
This should focus the parties upon the real issues at an early stage, and avoid surprises by appropriate directions, thus concertinaing into one hearing the first 3 steps of the existing Protocol.
The steps for implementation which are under way are as follows:
So far as the pre-proceedings Statutory Guidance is concerned, members of a sub-committee of the Family Justice Council, called the Children in Safeguarding Proceedings Committee chaired by Catherine Gieve, have been asked to consider what matters should be included in it and what information should be provided to the court for the important first hearing. As you are aware, members of the Family Justice Council represent, at a very high level, the many disciplines involved in the different aspects of child care proceedings, and as such their contribution will be invaluable. But, because they are unable to report until September, and to maintain impetus, it is important for the judiciary to proceed in parallel, discussing and preparing on lines which they anticipate will have FJC support and which are open to any necessary adjustment once the FJC recommendations are received.
Now there is no doubt that a complicating factor in these matters is the background of proposed organisational changes in the world of family work and in particular the encouragement of work including care work into the family proceedings courts, where there is spare capacity, and proposals for a degree of specialisation in the FPCs. In this connection, problems of gate-keeping and ease of transfer between the FPC and the County Court and vice versa are having to be ironed out as well as the increased role of CAFCASS in each forum.
Against this background, I am setting up two separate small judicial working groups concerned directly with care proceedings. The first is a judicial implementation working group, which will begin its work as soon as possible to look at the legal aspects of the changes to procedures and paperwork and make suggestions in relation to the new Protocol and supporting Practice Directions. This should go some way to answering the concerns you will hear raised by Margaret Wilson regarding inadequate assessments and poor documentation. The work of the Family Justice Council will be invaluable to inform this project from the interdisciplinary point of view.
The second working group, including representatives from the Family Proceedings Courts, is meeting next week to look at practical implementation of the gate-keeping role, particularly in relation to the venue for the important first hearing, and how emergency applications will fit into the protocol framework.
In parallel with these two bodies the has its own Care Proceedings Programme Delivery Board on which Mrs. Justice Macur sits as my judicial representative.
Now, one of the dangers when there are parallel groups of this kind, where governmental interest in the outcome and the resource implications are shared between the DCA and the DfES, and where local initiatives are also in train, is that the left hand does not always know what the right hand is doing. So, in order to co-ordinate all of the various initiatives and projects with which we are all to some degree concerned, and to ensure that as Head of Family Justice, I and my office consult and remain in touch with all the key agencies involved in the Family Justice System, I have set up the President’s Combined Development Board. Under that umbrella, the government agencies, CAFCASS, DCA the DfES (and the Legal Services Commission by invitation) meet to consider and co-ordinate plans for the best way to provide an efficient and effective family courts system. Each of these agencies receives advice outside board meetings from various groups looking at specific questions. I myself am advised and assisted by my judicial review team of Munby, Coleridge and Ryder JJ, whose responsibility it is to take an overview of the judicial aspects of implementation of the Review.
And, finally to ensure that matters are thoroughly joined-up, and overseen at the ministerial level by the Minister accountable to Parliament, Harriet Harman has instituted her own Ministerial Group on Care Proceedings. This will meet quarterly. The members, include the Minister, myself, Anthony Douglas of CAFCASS, and senior officials from DCA and DfES
Against that background, and considering the large number of points of detail to be worked out, it seems to me that perhaps Glyn has, after all, got his timing right. The shape of the Child Care Proceedings Review is now known, while the practical details are still being discussed. You have come together at precisely the right moment to discuss them yourselves and to make your own suggestions to influence how matters are taken forward to ensure that the aims of the Review are achieved. They are, as the Review states them, to improve the system for children and families subject to proceedings; and to ensure that all resources in the system are used in the most timely and effective way
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