Care proceedings are being completed more quickly in England and Wales, but their average duration still far exceeds the 26-week statutory target, official figures have shown.

Cases where councils applied for a care or supervision orders that were completed in April to June 2024 took an average of 41.2 weeks, down from a recent high of 44.8 weeks in January to March 2023, when just a quarter of cases were disposed of within 26 weeks.

This figure has risen since but, as of April to June 2024, just over two-thirds of cases (68%) exceeded the statutory limit, according to the Ministry of Justice’s latest quarterly statistics on the family courts system.

The data also showed the number of applications for High Court orders to deprive children of their liberty – often in unregistered placements – were far outstripping those for orders to place children in secure homes in 2024, with the latter having declined significantly since 2021.

Progress against the 26-week target

The Children and Families Act 2014 introduced the 26-week limit for courts to dispose of applications for care or supervision orders, in order to provide certainty for children. While courts may extend the timetable, this should not be routine, and they must consider the impact on the welfare of the child in doing so.

Case durations fell following the introduction of the law, reaching 26.2 weeks on average for those completed in October to December 2016.

However, they then rose steadily on the back of a spike in application numbers from 2016-18 before increasingly sharply during the pandemic as the family courts struggled to progress cases.

Relaunch of public law outline to tackle length of proceedings

In January 2023, the president of the family division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, “relaunched” the public law outline (the PLO), the procedures governing care proceedings, to tackle the duration of proceedings.

This involved minimising the use of experts witnesses, keeping the number of hearings to three per case and limiting the court’s decision-making to whether the care or supervision order threshold was met, permanence provisions, contact arrangements and final orders.

Since then, average case lengths have fallen steadily. However, they remain far off the 26-week target, as the MoJ figures show.

‘Unacceptable backlogs’ remain

At the end of July 2024, Sir Andrew acknowledged that progress had been made but said that it had been “slow”, and that “unacceptable backlogs” remained.

Sir Andrew said he planned to “reinvigorate” the PLO relaunch this autumn, including through setting targets for improvement.

Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the High Court

These would include improving the use of the issues resolution hearing (IRH), the second hearing in a case. IRHs are designed to identify and narrow remaining issues in the case and, potentially, resolve them, avoiding the need for a final hearing.

The president said he had been told that, in some areas, less than 5% of cases were resolved, or substantially resolved, at the IRH, “with the result that 95% of cases go on to a final hearing which may be listed many months hence”.

He linked this to judges sometimes having four or five IRHs listed in a single day, preventing them from focusing on individual cases.

Squeezing issues resolution hearings ‘a totally false economy’

“To undertake an IRH, a judge must be given sufficient time to prepare the case as if preparing for the final hearing and the listing should be sufficient to accommodate the hearing of short evidence if required,” he added.

“Not to allocate time at the IRH stage is a totally false economy given the delay that will then follow, no doubt with further hearings, and the listing of a much longer final hearing in due course if the case remains contested.”

Sir Andrew added that some court areas may be “struggling to achieve the change of local culture that is required by the PLO relaunch”.

Targets for speeding up proceedings

In April this year, the Family Justice Board, the partnership of government, council leaders, Cafcass and the judiciary that oversees the system, set the following targets for speeding up proceedings by 31 March 2025:

• No open public law case should be taking longer than 100 weeks.
• Care and supervision cases should be taking an average of 32 weeks.
• At least 81% of all new cases should be completed within 26 weeks.

In response to the MoJ data, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services said progress towards the 26-week target likely reflected the impact of the PLO relaunch and improved pre-proceedings work by councils, among other factors.

The chair of the ADCS’s families, communities and young people policy committee, Helen Lincoln, added: “Reducing unnecessary drift and delay in the system is important, however, our main aim should always be meeting children’s needs, even if this falls outside the 26-week limit.”

DoL order applications far outstripping those for secure orders

The MoJ figures also revealed there had been five times as many applications to deprive children of their liberty under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction (590) as there had been applications for a secure accommodation orders (109) in the first half of 2024.

Deprivation of liberty orders, previously rare, have become commonplace in recent years as councils have struggled to find appropriate placements for children with very complex needs.

However, they often involve placements in unregistered settings – which are not monitored by Ofsted – though in such cases the court usually requires the provider to register the service rapidly.

Lack of secure children’s homes

One of the reasons cited for the rise of DoL orders has been the severe shortage of capacity in secure children’s homes, whose functions include accommodating children under secure orders. These are for children with a history of absconding who are likely to suffer significant harm if they abscond again.

The number of children accommodated in SCHs in England and Wales on secure orders fell from 96 to 72 from 2018-24, according to official data.

This is despite the number of available places in homes being relatively stable during that time, numbering 220 in both 2018 and 2024, with about 105 places contracted to the MoJ for use for young people who have committed offences, during this time.

‘Demand far outstrips supply’ of children’s home beds

The MoJ family courts data revealed a significant drop in the number of secure orders applied for by councils in recent years, from 404 in 2021 to 319 in 2023. Were current application rates to be maintained in 2024, the yearly total would be about 218.

For ADCS, Lincoln said: “Secure children’s homes offer intensive support to our most vulnerable children and young people at times of extreme crisis or distress, but many local authorities report major difficulties sourcing a placement.

“Demand for a bed far outstrips supply, despite local authorities only making a handful of placements a year which may be a reason for the decline in the number of applications being made.”

She added that applications for DoL orders were always a “last resort” to “manage complex mental health presentation and high-risk behaviours” due to lack of secure beds and inpatient mental health provision for young people.

Children placed in ‘illegal’ provision

The MoJ figures also showed that, of DoL applications made in July to September 2023, final orders had been made in 269 cases. Of these, 67 children were still subject to an order over a year after their first order was made, a point highlighted by sector research body the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory.

Its director, Lisa Harker, said: “Deprivation of liberty orders were only ever meant to be a last resort used, for example, when a place in a secure children’s home was not available for a child a risk of imminent harm. Now they vastly outnumber applications for registered secure accommodation.

“Around half of children on deprivation of liberty orders are being placed in unregulated (and illegal) provision – and this latest data shows for the first time that children are often trapped in these placements, with a quarter still subject to a DoL order 12 months later.”

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A third of recent infant care cases involved parents with learning disabilities or difficulties, research has found.

However, in most cases, parents’ conditions were only identified at the court stage, in part because social workers lacked the time and training to do so.

As a result, parents missed out on support that could have helped them prove or develop their parenting abilities, found the study, commissioned by family courts research body the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO).

The research, by academics from Oxford Brookes University, found that as a result, reasonable adjustments were not made for parents at the pre-proceedings stage and, more generally, parenting support from councils was insufficiently adjusted to their needs.

Social work ‘need better training’

The study report called for improved training for practitioners in working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties and for action to promote their earlier identification, for example, through screening by children’s social workers.

The conclusions of the research echo those of a separate King’s College London study, which found parents with learning disabilities lacked support before, during and after care proceedings, including because they were often ineligible for adults’ services.

In response to the latest report, the NFJO said parents faced a “serious injustice” due to services’ failure to adapt to their needs, while children’s directors said it showed the need for closer working with adults’ services for these families.

What the research involved

The research team studied records for the 50 most recently concluded care cases involving children aged under one, as of March-April 2023, in each of four local authorities.

They also interviewed 42 social care professionals, 17 lawyers and four mothers with learning disabilities or learning difficulties who had experience of proceedings.

It found that parents’ conditions were generally identified using cognitive assessments that invariably tested IQ: an IQ of less than 70 indicated a learning disability and one of between 70 and 85 a borderline learning disability.

Assessments explored 10 domains seen as relevant to parenting: understanding and comprehension; processing information; literacy; attention and concentration; memory; verbal or non-verbal reasoning; independent living skills; adaptability; social interactions; understanding other people’s thoughts and needs.

Proportion of cases involving parental learning needs

Researchers found that, in 67 of the 200 cases, there was reliable – mostly expert – evidence that at least one parent – 60 mothers and 25 fathers – had a learning disability or learning difficulty. According to government data, about 2.16% of the adult population has a learning disability

In just under half of these cases (45%) – 15% of the total – evidence indicated that the parent had a learning disability; this compares to an estimated prevalence of about 2% of the adult population in England having a learning disability.

A similar proportion found to have a borderline learning disability; in the remainder (10%) of the 67 cases, the parent was found to have a learning difficulty, mostly ADHD.

About half (49%) of the mothers in the 67 cases had already had children removed in previous proceedings, while in a similar proportion of cases (51%), the mother had experience of the social care system as a child.

Conditions ‘identified far too late’

In most cases (81%), parents were referred to children’s social care during pregnancy. However, the most common reasons for referral were mental health (75%) and domestic abuse (73%);  learning disabilities or difficulties “were very infrequently mentioned as a concern or risk, or even identified”, at the point of referral, said the report.

Analysis of case files found that parents’ learning disabilities or difficulties were not identified until the care proceedings stage in 45% of cases, while in a further 30%, they had been registered during a previous set of court proceedings involving the parent.

Professionals interviewed for the research said that parents’ conditions “were identified far too late and that there were frequently missed opportunities to identify these earlier in the journey”.

Delays were partly driven by the costs to councils of commissioning independent cognitive assessments prior to proceedings (at which point costs could be shared between parties) and the unavailability of adults’ services to carry these out.

Social workers ‘lack training on learning disabilities’

However, interviewees also said that children’s social workers lacked the experience and expertise, and the face-to-face time with parents, to effectively identify learning disabilities or difficulties.

“Social workers considered that there was only very limited training for them on learning disabilities or difficulties at any stage of their career,” said the report. “It was not prioritised.”

The failure to identify learning disabilities or difficulties, as well as social workers’ lack of training and time, undermined the quality of practitioners’ communications with parents, which in turn adversely affected parental engagement.

Mothers interviewed for the research reported that practitioners’ communications were not tailored to their needs, while they also criticised the turnover of social workers, which meant they had to retell their stories.

Lack of reasonable adjustments

More broadly, the report found a lack of reasonable adjustments were made for parents prior to the care proceedings stage, contrary to councils’ duties to make such adjustments to avoid disabled people being put at a “substantial disadvantage” (section 20 of the Equality Act 2010).

This was evident both in parenting capacity assessments and the provision of parenting support. In just under two-thirds of cases (64%), parenting support was “poorly or not at all tailored to the parent’s needs”; in most of these circumstances, the parent’s learning disability or difficulty had not been identified.

Problems included parents being given inappropriate worksheet-based learning materials, having pre-birth sessions that covered far too many topics or being referred to non-tailored parenting classes.

Adults’ services were rarely involved, contributing to an assessment in 15% of cases, despite having been asked to in 27%. Professionals reported that support from adult social care was “often unattainable” for parents with learning disabilities or difficulties because of long waiting times or high thresholds.

This is despite people with learning disabilities being eligible for care and support under the Care Act 2014 if, as a result of needs arising from their condition, they are unable to achieve at least two of 10 outcomes  – including caring for a child and maintaining family relationships – with significant impact on their wellbeing.

Call for improved social worker training

The report’s recommendations for councils included:

• Requiring children’s social workers to screen for and, where indicated, organise a more in-depth assessment of a parent’s learning disabilities or difficulties as a core part of any early assessment work and at the latest during formal pre-proceedings.
• Making sure children’s social workers and family support workers undergo regular training to identify, communicate effectively with and tailor support for parents with learning disabilities or difficulties.
• Ending the practice of delaying support until after a pre-birth assessment has been completed, or until the child’s birth, so practitioners engage and work with parents as soon as possible.
• Ensuring lay advocacy is consistently available pre-proceedings and provided by people sufficiently trained in working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties.

It also called for national policymakers to improve “visibility and impact” of the Good Practice Guidance on Working with Parents with a Learning Disability, originally published by the government in 2007. This has been subsequently updated by specialist academics at Bristol University, but without government involvement.

They should also explore, with Social Work England, how far there is sufficient focus on working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties in social work qualifications.

FDAC model mooted

In addition, it called for pilots to test ideas such as embedding learning disability specialists in children’s social work teams and the development of more tailored pre- and post-birth and post-proceedings support, and mooted applying, in part or whole, the family drug and alcohol court (FDAC) model to this group of parents.

Under FDACs, multidisciplinary teams work with parents to help them tackle their substance misuse, while specially-trained judges undertake fortnightly sessions with them to oversee progress.

At the same time, specially trained judges undertake fortnightly sessions with parents – in the absence of lawyers – to oversee progress and foster positive working relationships between families, the judiciary and FDAC practitioners. There is evidence that children are more likely to be reunified following FDACs, compared with standard care proceedings.

‘Serious injustice’ risk

For the NFJO, director Lisa Harker said: “The number of babies being removed from their families has been rising for many years. Uncovering that such a significant proportion of the parents in these cases are likely to have learning disabilities or difficulties has a profound impact on how we should be thinking about the type of support they need.

“The pre proceedings period is a vital chance for parents to learn or prove their parenting ability, and if these services are not being adapted to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities or difficulties then we could be looking at a serious injustice.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said the report made for “difficult reading” and the issue required “attention and action”.

“This cohort of parents illustrates the need for close working between children’s and adult social care to understand needs and where this is in the best interest of the child, support families to stay together,” said Helen Lincoln, chair of the ADCS’s family, communities & young people committee.

“Where this need hasn’t previously been identified, the system in which we work absolutely places the child’s interests above all else, which is right.”

By Mary Baginsky

Just a quarter of people with learning disabilities (26%) are on their GP surgery’s learning disability register, according to research published this year by the Nuffield Trust.

This indicates the majority are not known to services, including social care. Similarly, we know many parents with a learning disability manage without calling on services.

In research published earlier this year, Professor Rick Hood and colleagues found that a reference to a ‘parental learning disability’ appeared in 3% of assessments carried out by children’s social care.

Increased risk of having children removed

But this does not reflect how many cases emerge once parents are in child protection or during family court proceedings (Hood et al, 2024). We know that parents with a learning disability are disproportionately represented in care proceedings and are much more likely to have children removed from their care (Booth, 2003).

Over the past two years, I have worked on the largest study that has been conducted in England into how adults’ and children’s social care work with parents with a learning disability.

Funded by NIHR School of Social Care Research, it started out as a project that looked at the support available from adult social care when children were removed from parents with a learning disability following care proceedings.

‘Minimal support’ from adult social care

It quickly became apparent that in many cases this was minimal and that it was more important to examine what was happening before that point.

After discussions with over 80 professionals across law, social care, health and advocacy, and fieldwork in 22 local authorities, including in-depth multi-professional case studies and interviews with parents, the deficits in the system were only too clear.

While there were pockets of good practice, often where a dedicated learning disability team was embedded in adult social care, most children’s social workers struggled when dealing with parents with a learning disability or where one was suspected.

Care Act eligibility criteria

To meet the national minimum threshold for eligibility for care and support, an individual must meet three conditions:

• they must have needs which arise from, or be related, to a physical or mental impairment or illness, such as a learning disability;
• they must be unable to achieve two or more of 10 specified outcomes, one of which relates to carrying out any caring responsibilities for a child;
• and, as a consequence of this inability, there is, or there is likely to be, a significant impact on the adult’s wellbeing.

The challenge of meeting threshold

Lawyers interviewed for the research found it hard to believe that their clients would not meet at least one other of the specified outcomes, particularly maintaining a habitable home or managing and maintaining nutrition.

However, unless the learning disability had a moderate to significant impact on a parent’s day-to-day life, it would not trigger support.

It is the degree of learning disability which secures any service from adult social care, and it was rare to encounter a case where adults’ services were involved with a parent.

Support can make ‘tremendous difference’

Where they were, it sometimes made a tremendous difference to the support parents received.

For example, in one authority, where there was an integrated learning disability service, this contributed to assessments that focused on identifying what needed to be in place to enable parents to ‘parent’ as well as ensure the safety of the child.

Elsewhere, it was often the commitment of individual social workers that led them to argue for resources or to build contact with other agencies, including children’s social care, and be determined to stay in the picture.

Adults’ practitioners ‘deferring to children’s colleagues’

But too often, perhaps as a result of demand and workloads, adult social care seemed to retreat in the face of child protection and defer to colleagues in children’s services.

However, children’s practitioners may not be proactive in keeping adults’ colleagues updated, for example, by inviting them to child protection conferences.

Lack of legal literacy

It was evident that many social workers in children’s social care had not received training on learning disabilities or the Care Act.

So, unless they worked or had worked in a team where that was some degree of specialism, it was difficult for them to develop the necessary confidence and skills.

Similarly, one lawyer, an expert on the Care Act 2014, recognised that child protection lawyers are usually not experts in adult social care and did not realise that their clients had not been treated lawfully when it came to accessing care and support.

There were real challenges when parents were not on the radar of any services. Social workers may fail to recognise that a parent may have a learning disability, or they may not be sufficiently curious or fail to act on instinct.

Confusion between learning disability and learning difficulty

This may be further complicated by the confusion between learning disabilities and learning difficulties. The importance of social workers and others being aware of the difference is closely tied to the support which someone needs.

A learning difficulty does not impact on someone’s intellectual ability, and the person is able to learn, even if certain barriers have to be overcome. Adult social care is very unlikely to become involved in these cases.

Someone with a learning disability will require support to function, dependent on the level of the disability. Though this brings them into the orbit of social care, adults’ services were also unlikely to become involved unless they were already working with a family.

Shortages of advocates and intermediaries

There are also many holes in the system through which parents with learning disabilities could fall as they pass through child protection and court processes.

Advocates and intermediaries, who support vulnerable people to give evidence in court, might be there to support that journey, but there are shortages of both, as well as the budget to support them.

In addition, intermediaries fear that family courts will be reluctant to appoint them to provide support for parents throughout care proceedings, including in cases in which it may be difficult to determine in advance the requisite nature and extent of their involvement.

This is because the observation of Mrs Justice Lieven, in West Northamptonshire Council v KA and Others [2024] EWHC 79 (Fam), that criminal justice guidance that appointment of an intermediary for a whole trial should be exceptionally rare is equally applicable to the family courts.

There is a long history of court cases involving parents with learning disabilities, which has established a body of case law and principles.

Councils criticised by courts for not following guidance

Some judgments have criticised local authorities for not applying the Good Practice Guidance on Working with Parents with a Learning Disability, published in 2007.

The guidance, produced by the then Department of Health and Department for Education and Skills, was intended to improve both the support for parents with a learning disability and the chances of their children continuing to live with them.

On one level, judicial criticism of the failure to follow the guidance is valid – our research unearthed how little awareness of it there is across adult or children’s social care. But any blame should be shared with successive governments, who have failed to promote it.

Government’s failure to promote or update guidance

While the guidance has been updated since, most recently in 2021, this has not been by government, but by the Working Together with Parents Network, based at Bristol University.

Since it first appeared, many changes have occurred across children’s social care – including many iterations of the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance.

While the principles embedded in the learning disability guidance remain valid, it is time for new guidance to be developed, in partnership with professionals in adults’ and children’s services, as well as with parents and their advocates.

Need for statutory guidance

Such guidance should be statutory, meaning councils and relevant bodies would be required to follow it other than in exceptional circumstances.

It should identify clear pathways for assessment and support, as well as training that should be in place according to responsibilities held.

It should also be aligned with the Department for Education’s children’s social care reform programme, which emphasises family support, family networks and kinship care – assuming this agenda survives the general election.

The government would then need to promote it and courts would be justified for criticising local authorities when it was not applied.

Applying the same standards to all

Removing children from their parents is an extremely serious action for the UK state to take.

It is then incumbent on that state to make sure that the same standards are applied to all. At the moment parents with a learning disability are at danger of being failed.

Mary Baginsky is reader in social care at the NIHR Health & Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London. 

References

Booth, T. (2003) Parents with learning difficulties, child protection and the courts. Representing Children, 13, 3, 175-188

Hood, R., Goldacre, A., Clements, K., Jones, E., King, A., Martin, E. and Webb, C. (2024) Studying the outcomes of children’s social care provision for different types of demand. London: Nuffield Foundation, Kingston University and National Children’s Bureau

In 2023, Jane Dunne was named the children’s services team leader of the year for her work with the Coventry and Warwickshire family drug and alcohol court service (FDAC).

This was not her first award since becoming manager of the then Coventry FDAC in 2016, with the team winning the public sector children’s team prize at the 2018 Children & Young People Now awards.

In 2021, the service’s success led to its expansion to cover Warwickshire.

Speaking to Community Care, Jane discussed why she believes FDACs are a better alternative to standard care proceedings, her approach to leading a multidisciplinary team and the risks to FDAC teams from constraints on public spending.

How did you become involved with the FDAC service?

Jane Dunne with the rest of her FDAC team / Photo by Jane Dunne

The service started in October 2015, and I joined in March 2016. I’d always been interested in the interaction between substance misuse and volatile relationships, and how that impacts on an individual’s mental health.

Then a secondment came up for six months to manage the Coventry FDAC service, because we only had temporary funding at that point.

I haven’t looked back. I remember thinking, “My goodness, I only had this for six months and now I’m here eight years later”.

One of the things that stood out to me was that it was a multidisciplinary team. We had a clinical lead, two substance misuse workers, a parenting officer, a children and family worker and three social workers, including a domestic abuse practitioner.

Everybody had their own expertise, but when I joined they were working in silo. I wanted to have a sense of identity as a team and to centre that around improving outcomes for children.

We did a lot of team development and broadened our knowledge and skills. We’ve all learned so much these last few years.

What makes an FDAC a better alternative to standard care proceedings?

In normal proceedings, when a case comes to the court, various assessments are ordered. But the results usually come in closer to the end of proceedings.

So if the hair and blood tests come in and they’re high in alcohol levels, then there is nowhere for the parents to go to demonstrate change because that’s their evidence. And they are expected somewhat to do everything on their own.

FDAC provides that level of scaffolding at a time when they need it. We offer an initial assessment with the experts – and we’ve got all the experts, so they don’t have to join long waiting lists.

The work is trauma-informed, it’s relationship-based. So everybody in the team tries, from the minute you meet the parent, to make them feel as comfortable as possible and build a rapport to support them.

We’re a consistent team. We see [the parent] two or three times a week. A children’s social worker might see them once a week for a parenting assessment in usual proceedings.

At the beginning of the trial, we do a peth test for alcohol consumption and an overview hair strand test of all six drugs [cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine, methamphetamine, opiates, benzodiazepines] because we know that parents are often frugal with what’s going on for them. They might say [they’ve taken] a little bit of cocaine and then when you get the hair and blood tests back it might be crack cocaine.

And then throughout the trial, we will do alcohol breath meter, oral swab and urine tests every time we see them. It helps parents reflect that they might have had a difficult week, because we don’t expect them to be progressing straight away. We want to discuss the triggers, thoughts and feelings around that and what we can put in place.

Alongside that, we’re looking at their parenting and their child’s needs, we’re running support groups and doing specific interventions. We try to understand what’s happening underneath and get to the root of the problem, to create long-lasting change.

We also build long-lasting relationships with them. A male parent who’s had his daughter in his care for four years now pops in for a cup of coffee every now and then. We talk about lifelong links for children but, if a parent has opened up to a group of professionals about their difficulties and were supported on their journey, it’s powerful to continue that relationship.

If they’re in a crisis in the future, they’ll need somebody to reach out to and some people don’t have anybody.

We are also looking at a permanent plan for the children. Reunification is what we are working towards, but where that is not possible, we look towards care with family or the possibility of reunification in the future.

FDAC has more reunification than in usual proceedings, although it takes a little more time to get there.

What happens within your service if reunification is not possible?

Even if children aren’t reunified, there is an opportunity for parents to still work on their recovery and their parenting.

If a child is put up for adoption, no matter how painful that is, if the parent can understand that they’re not in a position to care for their child, they will often say, “I consent to my child being adopted because I know I can’t meet their needs. It’s not because I don’t love them.”

And they get a lot of support with that within FDAC – it helps change the language of the negative stigma around not being there for your children. We also offer some post support, and, later on, people can still call us for advice.

For example, a young woman we worked with last year contacted me recently and said, “I’m in a new relationship, I’m pregnant, and I need to demonstrate that I’m sober”. So we were able to give her some advice.

What is your approach to managing a multidisciplinary team?

Jane Dunne during a visit to Westminster / Photo by Jane Dunne

I think it’s about shared values, and understanding our limitations and knowledge.

I was terrified of managing the substance misuse worker because of my limited knowledge. I thought I knew quite a lot about drugs and alcohol, but when I came here, I [realised], “Oh my gosh, I know nothing”. It prompted me to study more and get a diploma in substance misuse and addiction.

I’m learning as much from [workers I manage] as they’re learning from me. I wouldn’t say it’s been an easy process – but it’s about furthering your understanding. For example, I developed my learning around cognitive behavioural therapy and trained in motivational interviewing.

I wanted the whole team to take that approach, so we provided training for them. We did a course on foetal alcohol syndrome and foetal alcohol disorder together because, although you’ve got that discipline, you need to layer up your knowledge and skills base – whether you are the children and family worker, the team manager or the clinical lead.

They also know they are safe to come to me; I’ve got their backs. I think most of my team are comfortable reaching out if they’re struggling.

As a manager, if I need to do casework because we’re struggling, then I’ll do that. But I’ll also do the supervision, the advocacy in the court, the strategic stuff.

I don’t see my role as just being one thing. It’s whatever it takes to keep the service going so that families have the best experience and that people feel safe to work.

Does the limited number of FDAC teams put pressure on you?

We have 13 FDAC teams now – we recently lost Kent and Cardiff – and there is an awful lot of pressure around funding and continuing the service.

We’ve been in a very fortunate position, where Coventry could see the benefit of this model and the cost avoidance. Although it might be expensive to set up and deliver, there is an acute saving in the long run.

But local authorities are under a lot of pressure. Many of my FDAC colleagues up and down the country have really struggled, hence the closures.

The judiciary really appreciates this model. They’d like to see it in every court, so it’s not just a postcode lottery and that’s fantastic. But it’s not funded.

Currently, funding comes from different sources. Our current expanded team was setup through a Department for Education grant and is currently funded by Coventry and Warwickshire local authorities.

We are fortunate to have the domestic abuse social worker role funded by the West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner, but overall the funding is reviewed every two years for the team.

Other teams may have health or public health funding too; it depends on how it was set up.

So what I’d like to see is core funding, so that managers can focus on the service delivery and not worry about whether our service will last another six months or two years. That’s the fragility and reality of it.

What are your goals moving forward?

My goal is to secure the funding for this service moving forward and improve on the offer that we give parents within proceedings and post-proceedings. Because at the end of the proceedings, when children are reunified, parents need support. It’s a time that might test your recovery and your parenting.

The best way for that is through having robust support around them, but also peer support. So that’s families and parents that have been through FDAC problem-solving together, having a community where they can support each other.

My hope would be to have that as part of the programme because many other sites do, but we’ve never had the funding. We manage a graduates’ group, but this is on frugal basis.

What has been a highlight of running this service?

The “graduates”. I think it’s such an achievement when parents come through proceedings and successfully reunite with their children.

We do a little graduation ceremony. We invite them back and they get a certificate and a card from us and the FDAC judge to say, “Well done”. We often buy or make cakes and we have a little celebration.

One parent, who I knew as a child when I was a social worker and was quite a challenging man and had a whole life of criminality, said in his graduation ceremony, “Wow, this is an achievement. I’ve always sat in court. I’ve never been invited to a court.”

For him, it was huge.

The aim and purpose of court reports 

The primary aim of a court report should always be to advise the court on how best to help the child.

The first step is to identify the purpose of the report – for example, making recommendations about family contact arrangements, seeking care orders, or putting forward adoption as the best plan for a child.

It is important to apply an analytical approach to the report; making sure the recommendations are comprehensive, clear and concise.

When writing your statement, you need to consider the audience. Formally, you are writing a report for the court, but your statement will also be read by the other parties involved (frequently, parents, and, in some instances, the child).

The statement should:

• identify the issue or issues to be resolved;
• limit the need for cross-examination (because you will have already addressed the most important questions).

Refer to research evidence and academic theory within the statement when this would aid your analysis. You should be able to explain what the research or theory means in your own words and how it applies to the child or family.

Always include references to credible sources if referencing research or an academic theory.

Key sections of a court statement

The following is from the social work evidence template (SWET), developed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and Cafcass. There is no single ‘way’ to complete a court statement, although many good statements will contain similar features.

The social work evidence template contains eight substantive sections:

1. Which orders are being sought and why? Explain why they are necessary to safeguard the child, and ‘why now’. Include a summary of work undertaken with the family so far, and why this is no longer sufficient to keep the child safe.
2. Family network. Include details of the child, family members and other people with whom the child has significant relationships (eg close family friends).
3. Child impact analysis. Reference the welfare checklist, and describe and analyse the child’s day-to-day experiences, needs, wishes and feelings, and risk and protective factors. Include an analysis of harm and the risk of future harm as well.
4. Parenting capability. Demonstrate an analysis of each parent’s capability to meet the child’s needs. This should include the ways that the parent has met the child’s needs in the past, along with evidence that they have not or cannot meet the child’s needs now or in the future, and how these gaps could be addressed (or why they cannot be). Outline what support you think is needed and how this could or should be provided.
5. Wider family capability. In this section, you should show that you have made every reasonable effort to identify and explore alternative care options for the child, with reference to all the adults mentioned in section two. Explain how wider family and friends have been identified as potential carers, including a summary of anyone who has been ruled out and why. Include the outcome of any completed viability assessments as well.
6. The proposed (interim) care plan and analysis of the realistic option. In this part of the statement, you should explain your proposed care plan for the child. Depending on local policies and procedures, you may need to submit a separate care plan document. To aid the court, you need to identify one preferred option, while also showing you have considered other options. Using this kind of ‘balance sheet’ approach is in accordance with prominent case law (Re B (A Child) [2013] UKSC 33 and Re B-S (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146).
7. Plan for family time (‘contact’). Local authorities have legal duties to allow children to have ‘reasonable’ contact with parents and any other guardians or anyone with parental responsibility, and people that the child may have lived with previously under a residence order or High Court order. This section should also consider contact plans with siblings where appropriate.
8. Social work chronology. You will need to produce a chronology that covers the previous two years. The primary requirement is a list of significant events. ‘Significant events’ will vary depending on each family and child. It is helpful to ask yourself, ‘How does this add to the court’s understanding of the child and family?’, before identifying events within the chronology.

The full guide on writing court reports includes more information on what to include and how to write clearly and analytically, and provides completed examples of each section of the social work evidence template. If you have a Community Care Inform Children licence, log on to read the full guide. 

Pre-court meetings between children’s social workers and Cafcass guardians have the potential to improve the care proceedings process, a pilot study has concluded.

However, a longer, forthcoming pilot will be needed to assess whether the meetings can curb current case backlogs. According to Cafcass, the average length of time it worked with families in these cases from July to September 2023 was 44 weeks, well above the 26-week target for the duration of proceedings.

Drive to reduce care proceedings delays

Reducing delay is the intended outcome of the meetings between practitioners before the case management hearing (CMH), which were tested over 10 weeks last autumn by 22 councils and local Cafcass teams in the Department for Education (DfE) commissioned scoping pilot.

This is also the judiciary’s ambition through its relaunch of the public law outline (PLO) last year.

Reducing need for expert assessments

The DfE’s thinking is that meeting the social worker before the CMH would improve the guardian’s understanding of the local authority’s work with the family and its rationale for the timing of the application and the order sought.

This may then reduce the uncertainty that leads to the commissioning of expert assessments, which is one of the leading causes of delay to care proceedings.

The scoping pilot, during which 108 pre-CMH meetings were carried out, was too short to test the impact on delay. Instead, Research in Practice, which delivered the pilot, examined the effectiveness of the process, in its evaluation report, published earlier this month.

Inconsistent practice

It said that, while having early conversations between children’s social workers and guardians was regarded as good, standard practice, in some sites, these were happening only inconsistently or not at all prior to the pilot.

Where they were taking place consistently, the pilot provided the opportunity to formalise the process and providing structure, though some participants felt there was a risk of duplication.

Pilot sites reported challenges in scheduling meetings in the short window between the application and the CMH, particularly given competing demands on social workers’ and guardians’ time.

This was made easier when the courts scheduled the CMH as close as possible to day 18 of the care proceedings process, there was early allocation of the case to the guardian and there was administrative support for practitioners in arranging the meeting.

Improving relationships and information sharing

Meetings were generally facilitated – usually by a local authority manager or leader – which participants said kept discussions focused. In some cases, other professionals also attended, and there were concerns from some participants that meetings were resource heavy.

Participants and pilot leads reported that the meetings were helpful in building relationships and sharing information between the social worker and guardian.

Council representatives said it was an opportunity for social workers to elaborate on what they had set out in evidence, including in relation to the child’s lived experience, the work done so far, including during pre-proceedings, and the rationale for the application.

Guardians reported coming away more informed about these issues and how well the wider family network had been involved in seeking to resolve issues of concern.

Pilot leads reported an openness from local authorities to being challenged by the guardian, with “robust social work discussions” providing the opportunity to improve the plan for the child.

Debate over whether guardians should share views

There was more debate over whether guardians should share their views on the local authority’s plan in the meeting, which happened in some cases but not others.

Local authority representatives said knowing the guardian’s initial views was helpful in preparing for court and prompting further enquiries.

For example, if the guardian said that they were unlikely to support the child’s removal but might recommend a mother and baby unit, this would enable the council to make enquiries as to availability.

Where this did not happen, council participants reported that “the meeting felt frustrating, and it was difficult to see the purpose or progress”.

However, Cafcass representatives reported that some guardians feared that their preliminary views would be taken as final, even though these may change.

Potential to improve proceedings

Participants reported that the pilot was too short to evaluate the impact of the meeting on the CMH itself. However, Research in Practice said that feedback indicated that the pre-CMH meeting had the potential to:

• Improve practitioners’ preparedness for the CMH.
• Improve the likelihood that further assessments directed by the judge at the CMH are necessary and proportionate and reduce the changes of them repeating work already undertaken by the council.
• Improve the likelihood that cases are fully timetabled to an issues resolution hearing (IRH) at the CMH.

On the back of its report, Research in Practice called for pre-CMH meetings to be tested over at least six months, in a wider pool of local authorities with a “robust” evaluation of their impact on the CMH and, by extension, the duration of proceedings.

DfE planning longer pilot

The DfE is now tendering for an organisation to deliver a one-year pilot of pre-CMH meetings, which will run from April 2024 to March 2025.

In response to the report, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said the duration of care proceedings currently “does not serve children’s best interests and ADCS welcomes all efforts to improve the process and make it less adversarial”.

Helen Lincoln, chair of the ADCS families, communities and young people policy committee said the evaluation “outlines a number of positive developments from the pilot, such as building better relationships and sharing of knowledge”.

Reduction in number of care applications

She also pointed to other “positive developments” such as the impact of pre-proceedings work in reducing the number of applications for care and supervision orders.

From April 2023 to January 2024, Cafcass received 9,410 new care applications, 585 (5.9%) fewer than in the same period in 2022-23.

Lincoln added: “This demonstrates what can be achieved but we need government to commit greater investment in the system so that all areas can benefit from what works if we are to see lasting change.”

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The Public Law Outline was relaunched last year with the aim of cutting delays in the length of care proceedings to meet the statutory 26-week target, including by reducing the number and scope of hearings.

A core part of the relaunch was ensuring that the pre-proceedings phase was used as effectively as possible in giving families the opportunity to stay together, underpinned by best practice guidance.

To help social workers navigate their way through these changes, Community Care Inform Children is holding a webinar on the topic delivered by experienced family lawyer Bruce Tregoning.

It will take place on 24 April 2014, from 12noon-1pm.

During the session, which is free for Inform Children subscribers, Bruce will help you to understand:

• Your priorities and responsibilities at each stage of the PLO, setting out the court’s expectations of social workers.
• How to use assessments effectively to investigate concerns, formulate plans and encourage change within the family, and how these can support court evidence if necessary.

Inform Children subscribers can secure their place by entering a promo code onto the online booking form.

This should have been emailed to you but, if you have not received it, please email ccinformhelpdesk@markallengroup.com for the code.

By Beverley Barnett-Jones

Addressing ethnic inequalities in children’s social care requires an understanding of the disparities that families face, as well as the factors that shape them.

The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory recently added to the evidence base by publishing a briefing paper on the ethnicity of children in care and supervision proceedings in England.

This was based on research carried out in collaboration with the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research at Lancaster University.

It used population-level data from Cafcass relating to 105,334 children from different ethnic groups who appeared in care proceedings for the first time between 2016-17 and 2021-22, and included an analysis of their demographic characteristics and legal outcomes.

Ethnic differences in age at start of proceedings

One of the key findings was that black and Asian children were, on average, older than white and mixed or multiple ethnicity children at the start of proceedings.

On average, white and mixed or multiple ethnicity children were five years old when they entered care proceedings, whereas black and Asian children were seven years old.

The proportion of children aged 10 or over was also highest for those who were black, Asian or from other ethnic groups. Furthermore, 27% of children from white and mixed or multiple ethnic groups came into court proceedings before they were a year old, compared with 19% of black children and 16% of Asian children.

This could indicate that local authorities are intervening in some families’ lives either too late or too early – but reliable evidence to establish this is not yet available.

Are children being supported at the right time?

There is a pressing need to examine whether children and their families are being supported at the right time.

Delayed intervention can mean that the measures eventually put in place are less likely to be effective – or might not make any positive difference at all – because the child and family might have already reached crisis point.

It would be pertinent to analyse the ethnicity of children who are already being safeguarded through child protection or child in need plans by the time they appear in care proceedings.

Order or no order

The research also paints a complex picture of how ‘interventionist’ final orders were.

At the end of proceedings, black and Asian children were more likely to not receive an order than children who were white or from mixed or multiple ethnic groups. In these cases, safeguarding action wasn’t deemed necessary at the end of proceedings – so could there potentially have been a level of overcautiousness or over-intervention from the local authority?

Or, conversely, had these families been helped to take measures or access support services to avert the need for an order? Research that investigates this issue would be welcomed, especially as care proceedings are likely to be stressful, traumatic and lengthy.

A case file analysis that assesses the reasons why the local authority believed a child was at risk of significant harm, and which order was originally applied for, would prove particularly beneficial.

Degrees of intervention

Furthermore, when black and Asian children did receive an order, they were, on average, ‘less interventionist’ than those received by their white counterparts.

For example, black and Asian children are most likely to be on supervision orders, which are at the lower end of the intervention ‘scale’. An exception to this finding was that black and Asian children had the highest proportion of secure accommodation or deprivation of liberty (DoL) orders, which are extremely interventionist. Again, it’s vital to ascertain why.

Black and Asian children were less likely to be on an adoption/placement order – the most intrusive form of state intervention in family life – than children from white and mixed or multiple ethnic groups. This happened to 6% of black and 5% of Asian children compared with 17% of white and 16% of mixed or multiple ethnicity children.

It is also important to note that mixed heritage children were significantly over-represented in adoption. As well as trying to unravel the reasons behind this, we should be considering how well their identity and cultural needs are being met.

Change in law on adoption and ethnicity

This is especially so as in 2014, the government removed the requirement for adoption agencies to give due consideration to the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background when making decisions about them.

We know there were many complex reasons for this legislative change, some driven by ideological positions, including the opinion that black children might have potentially been missing out because they were waiting to be placed with the right family based on racial and cultural characteristics.

But, nearly 10 years later, we can see that this change did not have the intended impact.

Fall in number of black children adopted

According to government figures, the number of black children adopted fell from 120 (2.2% of the adopted population) in 2014-15 to 60 (1.7%) in 2019-20. Over the same period, the number of black children who were no longer being looked after because they had been adopted went down from 4% in 2015 to 2% in 2020.

Furthermore, the Ending Racial Disparity In Adoption report (Adoption and Special Guardianship leadership Board, 2022) found that black children waited longer for adoption than white children.

It concluded that the strategies required to find families for black children in need of adoption were to recruit black adopters and match black children; rebuild trust with marginalised and minoritised families; and to properly resource interracial adoption.

Recruiting black adopters

Significant work is being undertaken by Adoption England – the umbrella body for regional adoption agencies – to address the complexity around recruitment and system barriers that prevent willing black families coming through to successful approval.

Much can also be learnt from the work of the Black Adoption Project led by Adopt London, which aims to create better futures for black adopted children in London and ensure that every black child who needs an adoptive family can have one

As I have indicated above, this research leaves many unanswered questions. We strongly encourage researchers to consider carrying out in-depth, quantitative or qualitative studies in relation to children’s and families’ journeys before and through family justice and afterwards, to analyse the disparities and complexities uncovered.

The quality and completeness of ethnicity data has been improving in recent years and we urge professionals working in and around the family court to ensure that children’s ethnicity is recorded where possible to enable this kind of research.

Taking an intersectional approach

I would also encourage social workers to consistently analyse care proceedings through an intersectional lens that looks at ethnicity along with other social categories such as class and gender.

This involves asking whether under- or over-intervention could be occurring in particular groups with differing ethnic identities and reflecting on what factors might be driving the measures being taken and the orders being applied for and granted.

Is there any evidence that individual or institutional biases could be influencing decision-making?

Or could adultification bias – when notions of innocence and vulnerability are displaced by notions of responsibility and culpability -be playing a part? Research suggests that black children are most likely to experience adultification bias, resulting in their rights being diminished or ignored and hindering child protection responses.

And, finally, I would call on social workers to implement anti-racist practice in their everyday work; to be informed about the disparities that children from different ethnic groups can face; and no matter how challenging or difficult it might be, to have open conversations about ethnicity and inequalities within the systems (including multi-agency) that they work within.

Beverley Barnett-Jones is associate director for practice and impact at the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and a registered social worker

Social workers and children’s guardians in 25 areas will hold pre-court meetings in order to test whether this will curb delays to care proceedings.

Under the pilot, council or children’s trust and Cafcass practitioners will have an information sharing meeting once proceedings have been issued but before the case management hearing (CMH). The CMH identifies the main issues in the case and sets the timetable.

The Department for Education-commissioned trial, run by Research in Practice, comes with care and supervision order cases having averaged 44 weeks from April to June this year, compared with a legal maximum of 26 weeks.

Improving guardians’ knowledge of case

Research in Practice said that a Cafcass and Association of Directors of Children’s Services analysis of cases lasting more than 48 weeks had found preparation for the CMH could have been improved if guardians had a clearer understanding of work done with the family to date.

Guardians would be better informed about how far this work had supported positive change for the family, and about social workers’ analyses concerning the timing of the application for proceedings and the type of order sought, it added.

“In some instances, this increased clarity may reduce uncertainty that leads to requests for new expert assessments at the CMH,” said Research in Practice.

“In all cases, the meeting should ensure that guardians come to the CMH with enhanced and up to date understanding of the child and family’s situation.”

Case lengths well above legal maximum

The average length of care and supervision cases fell from 55 to 27 weeks, from 2011-16, but then rose steadily to 47 weeks in the first three months of last year, since when it has fallen slightly, to 44 weeks, according to Cafcass figures.

The increase in case duration came despite the number of care and supervision applications falling year on year from 2015-16 to 2021-22, before stabilising in 2022-23. They are on course to fall again in 2023-24.

While the Covid-19 lockdowns increased delay by reducing court capacity, resource shortages across local authorities, Cafcass and the family courts, and difficulties sourcing expert witnesses also contributed, found a House of Lords committee in a report in December 2022.

PLO relaunch

That was just after family court president Sir Andrew McFarlane “relaunched” the public law outline (PLO) – which governs how cases are managed – in order to reduce delay.

This involves minimising the use of experts, keeping the number of hearings to three per case and limiting the court’s decision-making to whether the care or supervision order threshold is met, permanence provisions, contact arrangements and final orders, excluding the wider care plan.

At the time, Sir Andrew said delay had become “normalised” and said he was launching a campaign to “exhort, require and expect every single professional, judge, magistrate or staff member in the system to get back to operating the PLO in full and without exception”.

Research in Practice identified a number of challenges with the pre-CMH meeting pilot, including maintaining the independence of the guardian and ensuring there was fair and transparent sharing of the views of children and parents at the meeting, and timely feedback to them afterwards.

It also warned that it would be a challenge to fit the pre-CMH meeting into the tight PLO timescales, meaning that pilot areas would liaise closely with courts service officers in making this work.

ADCS and Cafcass backing for pilot

Cafcass and the ADCS both welcomed the pilot.

Cafcass chief executive Jacky Tiotto told Community Care that pre-CMH meetings “stood a high chance of helping” with delay.

She said the meetings would help guardians identify issues such as whether there were family members likely to come forward to offer to care for the child, and mean work could be “frontloaded” so that it would not be required later in the case.

For ADCS, families, communities and young people policy committee chair Helen Lincoln said: “The backlog we are experiencing in the family courts and the length of time care proceedings are taking does not serve children’s best interests.

“Everyone within the system is working tirelessly and rightly trying to prioritise children but the lasting impacts of the pandemic and a rising number of children coming into contact with children’s services add extra difficulties.

“ADCS welcomes efforts to explore ways that will allow care proceedings to be resolved quicker and become a less adversarial process.”

By Leigh Zywek and Richard Devine, Bath and North East Somerset Council

In our work, we have found that many of the challenges parents faced in safely caring for their children stemmed from coping strategies the parents had developed to handle extremely difficult and traumatic childhoods.

This exposed the significant disparity between the support provided to parents and what they required. We began to feel that the parents involved needed psychological treatment.

At the same time, psychological assessments of parents in care proceedings almost always recommended psychological treatment. But nearly all said such treatment would take too long and thus fall outside of the child’s timescale.

‘If therapy had been obtained earlier, outcomes might be different’

This issue was highlighted  in a judgment published eight years ago by His Honour Judge Stephen Wildblood KC, in which he said:

“Time and time again I see a process whereby the following occurs: a) a Local Authority intervenes and begins making assessment of a family; b) months later proceedings are issued; c) an order is made for some form of expert evidence to be produced (often a psychological report); d) months later the psychological report is obtained which says, invariably and utterly foreseeably, that someone within the family needs therapy and e) it is stated that, by then, the beneficial effect of therapy would be ‘outwith the timescales for the child’.

“In this case, for instance, it would have been perfectly obvious to all that, when the mother was referred before birth, she was a prime candidate for therapy. If therapy were to be obtained at an early stage such as that there is at least a prospect that outcomes in some cases might be different.”

Researching therapy options

We undertook research into psychological therapy and discovered that the primary therapeutic approaches (mentalisation-based therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, trauma-informed cognitive behavioural therapy, cognitive analytic therapy, etc) produced similar outcomes (Wampold & Imel, 2015, Johnson and Boyle, 2018).

Even more surprisingly, “matching the model of treatment to a psychiatric diagnosis has an insignificant impact” (Sami Timimi, cited in Johnson and Boyle, 2018).

Furthermore, two critical factors were relevant to the success of treatment: the individual’s willingness to engage with the therapy and the relationship between the individual and the therapist (Johnson and Boyle 2018, Wampold 2001).

Providing therapy to parents in pre-proceedings

We were surprised and encouraged by these findings, so much so that we felt obliged to tentatively explore providing therapy to parents involved in pre-proceedings, one family at a time.

We applied two guiding rules, drawing on our learning from the research:

1. To increase the parent’s sense of control and improve the first variable, willingness to access treatment, we would provide an overview of the different therapeutic approaches and invite the parent to choose one.
2. We would work together to identify a therapist, with care taken to ensure that, relationally, it was a good match, thus accounting for the second variable, the quality of the relationship between the patient and therapist.

We learned along the way about which parents were ready and which were not, and how to create the conditions that facilitated participation.

One parent’s story

One parent from Bath and North East Somerset Council had had her child removed at birth due to being in a severely domestically abusive relationship. She separated from her partner and, with trepidation, attended therapy.

Through this, she was able to learn that she took on a caregiving role in her childhood and, without awareness, applied this to adult relationships:

“The only thing I see myself or deem myself good at is to look after people, which is why then sometimes I tend to attract a lot of people that are troubled and try to help them [because] subconsciously that is what I feel is my purpose…but then obviously that gets me then in a situation where people will take advantage.”

Through learning about herself, and understanding unconscious patterns, she was able to develop alternative ways of relating to herself and others.

She said that accessing therapy was “one of the reasons that he [her child] was able to come home to me and be with his mum”.

She added: “[Without it] I would’ve been in the same place and they wouldn’t have given me my son back. All because there wasn’t that help. Yeah, and all it took, all it would’ve took was the therapy.”

A potentially transformational impact

Cases like this and others have shown us first-hand how therapeutic support can have a transformational impact, break intergenerational patterns and allow parents to safely look after their children.

We think this illustrates why this is so important.

We have also received support from Cafcass, barristers, children’s guardians and the courts, including Judge Wildblood,

Spreading learning

Offering access to therapy is now a staple part of our offer for parents in BANES.

We have begun working regionally with other local authorities to see if we can collectively provide therapeutic support for families in pre-proceedings.

We are keen to share our approach in the hope that, in the same way HHJ Wildblood’s remarks eight years ago sowed a seed of inspiration for us that enabled this approach to come to fruition, we can do the same for other local authorities.

References

Johnstone, L & Boyle, M with Cromby, J, Dillon, J, Harper, D, Kinderman, P, Longden, E, Pilgrim, D & Read, J (2018), The Power Threat Meaning Framework: Towards the identification of patterns of emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis, British Psychological Association

Wampold, BE, & Imel, ZE (2015), The great psychotherapy debate: The evidence for what makes psychotherapy work (2nd ed), Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group

Wampold, BE (2001), The great psychotherapy debate: models, methods, and findings, Routledge

Leigh Zywek is assistant director, children and young people services, and Richard Devine consultant social worker, at Bath and North East Somerset Council 

HHJ Judge Stephen Wildblood KC is the designated family judge for Bristol and surrounding areas