The use of unregulated experts in children’s family court cases is to be curbed, following concerns about their use in cases involving so-called “parental alienation”.

The courts would not be able to permit the instruction of an expert who was not regulated or on an accredited register other than in exceptional circumstances, under a proposed change to the Family Procedure Rules, which govern children’s court proceedings.

The proposal has been issued for consultation by rule-setting body the Family Procedure Rule Committee, which said that “experts, often using the title psychologist, may be instructed to give evidence or offer diagnoses which they are not qualified to undertake”.

The proposed change responds to concerns from campaigners and the judiciary about the instruction of unregulated psychologists to give expert evidence on so-called “parental alienation”.

The concept refers to a child’s reluctance, resistance or refusal to spend time with a parent due to their alleged manipulation by the other parent.

Parental alienation ‘discredited’ as diagnosable syndrome

The idea of parental alienation as a diagnosable syndrome is discredited and has no evidential basis, said guidance for practitioners issued last year by the Family Justice Council (FJC), which comprises senior judges and family court practitioners and oversees the system.

However, parents are increasingly making claims of parental alienation in private law cases, often in response to allegations of domestic abuse by the other parent, with concerns that it can be a tool of coercive control, said the guidance.

The FJC said the courts should assess whether a parent has engaged in “alienating behaviours” that have led to the child’s resistance to seeing the other parent, with the child’s feelings not being a response the latter parent’s actions, including perpetrating domestic abuse, or due to attachment issues.

It added that it was “inappropriate” for experts to be called to give fact-finding evidence of whether alienating behaviours had occurred, though it may be necessary to instruct a psychologist to help the court determine the welfare outcome for the child.

Professional regulation of psychologists

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) regulates clinical, counselling, forensic, health, educational, occupational and sports and exercise psychologists, each of which is a title protected by law, as are the umbrella terms for these groups: ‘practitioner’ and ‘registered’ psychologists.

Separately, professional body the British Psychological Society (BPS) accredits practitioners with specified academic qualifications as “chartered psychologists”, a title which is also legally restricted.

However, the term “psychologist” is not legally protected, meaning that “both fully qualified and experienced psychologists and people who are not qualified in psychology at all can legitimately refer to themselves as any kind of psychologist”, according to the BPS.

It has said that a series of other titles – assessment, child, criminal, developmental, expert, consultant or graduate psychologist – are in use, despite having “no specific meaning in applied psychology or psychological practice”.

‘Lack of proper checks from professional body’ on some experts

Currently, the Family Procedure Rules state that expert witnesses must comply with eleven standards, including that they must be registered if their practice is regulated. If they are not in a regulated profession, they “should demonstrate appropriate qualifications and/ or registration with a relevant professional body on a case by case basis”.

However, there is no requirement to join a professional association that oversees compliance with minimum qualification standards and continuous professional development, said the Family Procedure Rule Committee.

“As a result, the current process allows for the instruction of unregulated experts whose lack of regulation does not provide parties a proper route to raise concerns over an expert’s conduct,” the committee said.

“This can lead to an uneven situation, where the standard of expert evidence varies depending on whether or not the expert instructed is subject to proper checks from a professional body.”

Curbing use of unregulated experts

The committee has proposed a rule change that would require expert witnesses in children’s family court cases to be “regulated experts”. This would mean they were regulated by a UK statutory body, such as the HCPC, were a health or care professional on a register accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) or were a legal practitioner regulated by an approved regulator under the Legal Services Act 2007.

The PSA accredits a number of non-statutory registers, based on them having met a set of quality standards, with several of these covering counselling, therapy or psychology.

There would not be a blanket ban on the courts appointing experts who were not regulated or registered, with proposed exceptions for international social workers, cases where no regulated expert was available and circumstances where the issue in question may only be resolved by the evidence of an expert who was not regulated.

The consultation runs until 6 June 2025.

Just over a third of Cafcass social workers have caseloads above target levels but the proportion in this category is continuing to fall.

The family courts body sees a caseload of 20 as being the maximum that enables relationship-based practice for social workers in its long-term teams.

As of mid-January 2025, 34.9% of family court advisers (FCAs) in these teams held caseloads of 20+, down from 42.1% a year earlier, while 5.5% had caseloads of 25+, down from 8.4% in January 2024.

The figures were shared in chief executive Jacky Tiotto’s report to Cafcass’s board meeting, held at the end of last month.

Average caseload holds steady following fall over previous year

The average caseload for these practitioners was 18 as of the end of December 2024, a similar level to that in September of last year, though down from 18.9 in December 2023 and 19.9 in May 2023.

For practitioners working in short-term private law teams – which handle cases up to a first hearing – the average caseload had fallen from 34.4 to 32.5 in the year to December 2024.

The reductions reflect an 8.5% fall in the number of open cases at Cafcass over the past year, from 30,096 in January 2024 to 27,542 in January 2025.

This was driven by a 10.1% fall in the number of open private law cases, from 18,244 to 16,406, which was accompanied by a 6% drop in the public law total.

At the same time, turnover of social workers has been stable, at 14.8% over the past year, a similar figure to the previous 12 months.

In a statement in September 2024, Cafcass said that further reducing caseloads was a “management priority”. It pledged to work with family justice partners to reduce demand and the additional work caused by delayed court proceedings, while also developing a “framework for a balanced workload”, setting out what was “reasonable and fair to expect of a confident and competent social worker”.

Cafcass working to reduce caseload variations between teams

Following the latest figures, it said these remained areas of work.

A spokesperson said: “Our recent data shows that the number of FCAs with more than 20 children’s cases with known future work for Cafcass open to them is continuing to decline with the national average level now consistently below 20 such children’s cases, although it is still not where we want it to be in every area of the country.

“We continue to work collaboratively with our partners in the family justice system with the shared aim to reduce both demand and also the duration of proceedings. We are also working internally to reduce the variation in the level of open children’s cases across our teams, including by targeting recruitment and retention activity in those areas where it can be hardest for us to recruit.

“We are making positive progress internally on the framework for a balanced workload.”

Social work practice changes are needed to engineer a shift towards much greater direct contact between adopted children and their birth families, experts have said.

The call came in a report that urged an overhaul of the current “outdated” approach to post-adoption contact in order to enable more face-to-face time between children and their birth relatives.

Despite evidence of the benefits of face-to-face post-adoption contact for children’s sense of identity, it is the exception not the rule in England and Wales, said the report, which was commissioned by family courts president Sir Andrew McFarlane.

Instead, most children only had indirect, “letterbox contact”, in which adoptive parents and birth families exchange information by letter once or twice a year, said the public law working group adoption sub-group.

In calling for a shift to much more direct contact, the group – which included representation from local government, Cafcass, the law, academia and the adoption sector – recommended significant practice changes for both adoption and child protection social workers.

But while the report was broadly welcomed by sector leaders, concerns were raised about there being a lack of support to underpin safe and effective contact.

Legal framework for post-adoption contact

Under the Adoption and Children Act 2002, the courts are required to consider whether anyone should have post-adoption contact with a child before making an adoption order (section 46(6)). They may also make orders requiring or prohibiting contact, including with the child’s birth family (section 51A).

However, the report said case law and anecdotal reports suggested section 51A orders were rarely used.

Also, while the courts may make orders for contact when a child is placed for adoption (section 26), Sir Andrew said that these were also rare, in a speech last year.

Problems with letterbox contact

The adoption sub-group said that, as a result, letterbox contact was the predominant form of post-adoption contact, despite the fact that it could prove problematic.

“A high number of arrangements stall as a result of one (or both) parties failing to maintain the arrangement,” said the report.

“This leaves many adoptees without any effective contact from birth families.”

Face-to-face contact ‘helps adoptees’ sense of identity’

At the same time, the research base was supportive of face-to-face contact, said the sub-group.

The report found “strong indications” that face-to-face contact helped adoptees “develop a sense of identity, accept the reasons why they were adopted and move forward with their lives”.

There was also “considerable evidence” that openness around the circumstances of the adoptee’s birth family was beneficial to the child, while the report also highlighted the “enduring sense of loss” that could occur from separating siblings.

However, it added that ensuring contact was safe was “pivotal to positive outcomes”.

Promoting direct contact when safe and in best interests

The report’s key recommendation was for a “tailormade approach” to contact for each child, which “promotes face-to-face contact with important individuals in that child’s life if it can be safely achieved and is in the child’s best interests”.

“It is recognised that this will not be safe for all adopted children, but the current system whereby face-to-face contact is the exception rather than the rule is outdated,” it added.

To support its preferred approach, issues around contact should be considered prior to any proceedings for the child, the report said.

Proposals for child protection practice

It said child protection social workers should identify relationships that are, or may be, important to the child during family group conferences or pre-proceedings, building on the existing process of identifying alternative carers.

It said this would provide “an early understanding of the child’s network and of who may be able to offer a positive perspective should direct post adoption contact be considered appropriate at the end of proceedings“.

These relationships should be set out in an “ecomap” – a visual tool setting out the network around the child – which should be prepared alongside the mandatory genogram for the social work evidence template, filed as part of court applications.

Early liaison with adoption social workers urged

The sub-group said there should be “specific guidance as to the prospective roles of child protection social workers and adoption social workers including a clear expectation of when they will begin liaising“.

The report backed child protection practitioners liaising with a named adoption social worker as soon as adoption was contemplated, to enable “an early exchange of information, a consultation around proposed contact plans and a smooth transition should a placement order be made”.

This would give the adoption social worker a clear understanding of the child’s networks.

Practice during care and placement proceedings

During proceedings for care and placement orders, social workers should further investigate which family members would be best placed to have contact with the child after adoption and carry out an assessment of anyone identified.

Practitioners should consider all possible forms of contact and balance the welfare benefits for the child against any safeguarding issues. They should then make a recommendation to the court in the final social work statement filed in care and placement order proceedings.

The social worker’s evidence should consider practical issues, such as frequency, duration and location, in the case of face-to-face contact, and the use of digital platforms, in the case of letterbox contact.

Alongside the provisional recommendations for contact, practitioners should draw up a draft contact support plan for the court’s consideration before the making of a placement order. This would form part of the child’s adoption support plan that would be subsequently drawn up with the prospective adoptive parents.

Addressing concerns of prospective adopters

A key barrier to contact between adopted children and birth families has been the prospect of opposition from adoptive parents.

The report did not propose that contact be ordered routinely “in the face of opposition from adoptive parents”, in line with case law.

However, it suggested opposition was “much less likely where adoptive parents are given a thorough understanding of the child’s needs right at the start and are given the right support”.

It said documents shared with prospective adopters about the birth family should be “balanced”, highlighting the positives as well as the negatives of their parenting, along with any mitigating factors.

Consideration should be given, in every case, to a meeting between the adopters and members of the birth family.

Bringing forward life story work

The report also said adopters would benefit from having life story books, including reference to all those people who have been identified as important to the child, available at the earliest possible opportunity.

While regulations in England specify that these should be available within 10 days of an adoption order being made, the report said it should be produced by the time of the order.

It said practitioners should agree on who should produce the book and set a timetable for doing so at the placement order stage.

Key ongoing role for adoption social workers

Should contact be recommended, adoption social workers should have an ongoing role working with the families to monitor how well it is going, offering periodic reviews of contact plans.

“They may need to re-evaluate the birth family’s ability to participate in contact or the adoptive family’s ability to support it, on an on-going basis,” the report said.

“They will need to formulate the ‘rules’ around contact and manage expectations.”

Sir Andrew welcomed the report’s recommendations, though stressed that arrangements around contact “must be determined by the needs of the individual child”.

Recommendations ‘reflect existing work by adoption sector’

Adoption England, the body that supports regional adoption agencies (RAAs), said the recommendations were in tune with work already underway by the sector to “improve how adopted children stay in touch with their birth families in a supported, safe and meaningful way”.

One of the outcomes from its 2024-27 strategy is that adopted people “maintain relationships with people important to them and have a good understanding of the reasons why they were adopted”.

This includes testing the use of digital contact platforms and some RAAs piloting Lifelong Links, a programme developed by the Family Rights Group (FRG) to support children in care to have lasting relationships.

Adoption England’s national strategic lead, Sarah Johal, said: “We also understand some of the complexities and challenges around this, so this is a journey, but we are making good progress supporting professionals, adoptive parents and birth families, with the safety and wellbeing of the child at the centre of our approach.”

Current position is ‘archaic’

For the FRG, chief executive Cathy Ashley said the current position was “archaic” and that the adoption sub-group’s recommendations were “a hugely important step in modernising adoption processes in England and Wales”.

“The permanent separation between adopted children and their birth family, often leaves children with unanswered questions and a sense of loss, that can last a lifetime,” she added.

“All too often we hear from birth parents who are told to keep the annual letterbox contact letters that they are permitted to send to their children ‘factual and light’, and that they cannot even tell the children that they love them.”

Support for contact ‘at best patchy, at worst non-existent’

Adoption UK said that more adopted children should have opportunities for contact with their birth family because of the benefits “safe and well managed contact” can bring in helping them “understand their life story and stay connected to important people in their lives”.

However, the charity’s chief executive, Emily Frith, warned: “Contact has to be meaningful and safe for the child and if it’s not well managed it can be harmful for them, both in childhood and into adulthood. At the moment, support for managing relationships between birth family and adoptive families is at best patchy, at worst non-existent.

She added: “There is an urgent need for radical change in support for contact – including funding for specialist support workers to help everyone involved.”

‘Careful balance needed between benefits and risks’

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) gave the proposals a cautious response.

“Enabling contact between a child and their birth family must be carefully managed and incorporating different methods of communication is part of that,” said Helen Lincoln, chair of its families, communities and young people policy committee.

“Digital contact pilots are currently being led by adoption leaders, but a careful balance must be struck between both the benefits and risks for the child.”

Government ‘to carefully consider findings’

Meanwhile, a Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know that adoption has a profound impact on everyone involved, and it’s vital that the child’s best interests are protected and remain at the heart of the process.

“This report offers an important review of the system, and we will carefully consider its findings and recommendations.”

Cafcass has issued a new domestic abuse policy to tackle practice deficits that remain four years after it was severely criticised in a government-commissioned report.

It said it had made progress since a panel investigating the family courts’ response to domestic abuse and other harms found practitioners’ court reports gave limited weight to children’s views, particularly when they said they did not want to spend time with an abusive parent.

Following the 2020 report, Cafcass initiated a national improvement programme to improve its response to domestic abuse, particularly in private law cases involving separating parents, where practitioners make recommendations to the court about what is in the child’s best interests.

The programme involved mandatory training for all family court advisers (FCAs) and children’s guardians, personal learning plans on domestic abuse for all practitioners and regular practice audits on the issue. It has also received support from domestic abuse charity SafeLives, which has seconded two staff to Cafcass.

Practice improving but ‘errors in judgment persist’

The second annual review of the improvement plan, published last year, said that, in most cases, FCAs understood “the harm, risk of harm and impact on children of domestic abuse and their analysis of this informs their recommendations to the court”.

However, Cafcass said the new policy was needed because “errors in judgment persist, with terrible consequences for child and adult victims”, while chief executive Jacky Tiotto said it was “intent on eliminating practice that isn’t good enough”.

The policy requires practitioners and managers “to listen to children and adults who have experienced domestic abuse and accurately record and share with the court what they have been told”.

No more references to domestic abuse ‘claims’

This includes not dismissing or minimising domestic abuse as historical or as a one-off incident. To do so “not only reveals a lack of understanding of the ongoing and long-term trauma of domestic abuse for victims but also perpetuates it”, the policy says.

Practitioners must also not “not reinterpret or reword the experience of domestic abuse victims”, but use their words about what happened to them and the impact it has had, in all reports to the court. They must also not use the words “claims” or “alleges” when referring to reports of domestic abuse.

“To do so minimises and diminishes the experience of the adult and child living with the impact and trauma caused by abuse,” the policy says, adding that it is for the court to determine the facts of any case.

Social workers must also not describe someone as anxious or suffering from mental ill-health, unless they have been clinically diagnosed, without considering that this may be a trauma response to abuse.

Recommendations around contact

The policy also includes several measures related to Cafcass social workers’ recommendations to the court on children’s contact with parents accused of abuse.

It stipulates that practitioners’ “starting point” should be to recommend that children do not spend time with a parent who is being investigated by the police for a sexual offence, has been convicted of such an offence or has served a prison sentence for violent or sexual offences.

Where practitioners depart from this starting point, this must be “supported by a compelling rationale, discussed with a manager, and recorded contemporaneously in the child’s case record”.

More broadly, FCAs or guardians must provide “a clear, unequivocal, and compelling rationale in their reports” for discounting domestic abuse as a risk to the child when recommending contact after abuse has been reported by either parent or the child.

Assessing perpetrators

When assessing a parent who has been domestically abusive, practitioners must not recommend contact with the child and the other parent without clear evidence that the perpetrator:

• Recognises the harm their behaviour has caused their victims.
• Has taken responsibility for the harm they have caused.
• Has taken action to sustain change in their attitude and to stop their harmful behaviour, which has been demonstrated over time.

These changes must result in an assessment that the risk of them perpetrating that behaviour has been removed to the point of enabling a recommendation that contact is in the child’s best interests.

As with sexual offences, any departure from this starting point must be supported by a compelling rationale, discussed with a manager, and recorded contemporaneously.

‘Parental alienation’

The guidance also addresses cases where a child does not want to see a parent following separation and the non-resident alleges this is because of “parental alienation”. This involves accusing the other parent of manipulating the child into holding negatives towards them.

Cafcass has separate guidance on “alienating behaviours“, which stresses that a practitioner’s “first step” in such cases is to consider whether domestic abuse or other harmful parenting factors are present.

This is reflected in the domestic abuse policy, which says that practitioners must “first consider whether the cause of this refusal is because the child is a victim of domestic abuse and harmful parenting”.

Objective of eliminating sub-standard practice

Launching the policy, Tiotto said: “When the advice put to the court, doesn’t get the balance right between the right of a child to have both parents in their lives and the risk of harm from that contact, when it doesn’t protect a child, when it isn’t in their best interests and when it puts their protective adult and carers in harm’s way, the consequences can be devastating.

“This is why we continue to prioritise further improvement in working with child and adult victims of domestic abuse. It is why we have an internal improvement programme, why we are listening so hard to child and adult victims and public concerns. We are intent on eliminating practice that isn’t good enough.”

She added: “I am sorry that some four years on from the harm panel report, there are still children and adults in family court proceedings who do not receive the protection they deserve and require.”

Domestic Abuse Commissioner welcomes policy

Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales Nicole Jacobs welcomed the guidance, saying that it adopted a “child-centric approach”, as she had urged in a 2023 report on the family courts.

“I am pleased that the language in this policy has shifted to become more natural and appropriate in the context of children disclosing abuse,” she added.

“Victims often tell me that the language professionals use to describe domestic abuse is hugely important to their wellbeing.”

Elevating survivor voices in family court practice

For SafeLives, interim director of quality and innovation Emma Robinson said it had been working with Cafcass, including through the secondment of two staff, on “elevating survivor voices into family court practices”.

“Many survivors have shared that their experiences with family courts, including Cafcass, have been deeply traumatising, and impacted their ability to move forward,” she added.

“Our role within Cafcass has been to support meaningful reflection and practical improvements, particularly around language and the introduction of the new domestic abuse practice policy, which we believe will lead to better outcomes for both children and adult victims of abuse.”

She added that SafeLives welcomed Cafcass’s “openness to collaboration and the positive response to the changes we are helping to implement”.

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.”

By Polly Baynes

Since January 2024, the press have been allowed into nearly half of family courts in England and Wales to report on proceedings, following a year-long pilot in three areas. What are the implications for social workers?

The need to limit press reporting to protect vulnerable children from the disclosure of sensitive personal information has long been recognised.

Section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 made reporting on family proceedings involving children a contempt of court.

Tension between confidentiality and transparency

But this was always in tension with the need for justice to be ‘seen to be done’.

Closed courts became harder to justify as society generally became more open and in the face of a series of inquiries into the deaths of children known to social workers and the contested removals of large numbers of children in Cleveland and Orkney in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to concerns about sexual abuse.

When New Labour introduced a target to increase the number of adoptions in 2000, this prompted unfounded claims that individual social workers were paid to ‘steal children’ for adoption with the support of corrupt and secret courts. This myth continues to be widely promoted on social media and has real-world consequences, increasing fear and hostility towards social workers, making it hard to build trusting relationships with families.

Social work fears

For many social workers, attending court is one of the most stressful parts aspects of their job even without the prospect of media criticism. Some remember how those working with Baby Peter Connolly were pilloried after the 2008 trial of those responsible for his  death.

The prospect of having the media cover cases prompted worries not just about insensitive reporting of family difficulties but also the potential disclosure of personal information about professionals. This was not unreasonable: social workers experience high rates of verbal and physical abuse, negative press reporting and online naming and shaming, including death threats and the sharing of home addresses and details of children’s schools.

Earlier attempts to open up courts

In 2009, journalists were allowed into family courts but not permitted to publish reports without the judge’s permission. In effect, the courts remained closed.

Families who felt that had been treated unfairly were not allowed to talk to the press – and could be in contempt of court if they shared the reports written about them with anyone.

The Daily Mail spearheaded a campaign for transparency in the family courts, fuelled by steadily increasing levels of child removal.

The paper claimed success in 2013, following the announcement of rules, introduced the next year, that made a presumption that judges would grant media requests to publish family court judgments – with public authorities and expert witnesses named – in most cases.

Family courts ‘still perceived to be closed’

However, in 2021, following a review of transparency arrangements, the president of the family division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane, found that the relevant practice guidance on publishing judgments was not being followed in many cases.

More generally, he concluded that a major shift in culture was needed to increase transparency, warning: “The family justice system is suffering from serious reputational damage because it is, or is perceived to be, happening behind closed doors.”

The transparency pilot

As a result, in January 2023, journalists were allowed to report contemporaneously on family proceedings, subject to careful anonymisation, in a pilot in three court areas, Leeds, Cardiff and Carlisle.

This was dependent on the judge making a transparency order, setting out what could and could not be reported, which was not always granted.

In a piece for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), former lead family judge for Cardiff, Jonathan Furness KC said there had been some teething troubles.

Judges were concerned about the time arguments about transparency would take in their busy court lists, while there were also issues with listings, making it hard for journalists to identify particular hearings they wished to attend. Resources were not always available for journalists to attend lengthy and complex cases.

Court work ‘recognised as important and child focused’

However, he concluded that the pilot had achieved its purpose: “There has been some excellent reporting showing the family court working well and for the benefit of families and children.

“Our work is being recognised as important and child and family focused. We deservedly receive better press than we previously did.”

A separate TBIJ article quoted the lead judge for pilot, Mrs Justice Lieven, as offering a similarly positive verdict.

“We went into this with nervousness, and it’s gone better than we feared,” she said. “Anonymity has been preserved – I have not had any complaints about jigsaw identification [a person being identified from different pieces of information].”

Reporting that can help readers understand decisions

As a practitioner, I was encouraged to read articles like that in the Yorkshire Post on 30 June 2023 (behind paywall), concerning proceedings for a baby for whom there was a plan for adoption.

Polly Rippon’s report from Leeds family court made clear that the judge was not prepared to endorse a plan for adoption without clear evidence that the child concerned would be at risk of significant harm if he went home. The social worker’s efforts to work with the parents during the pregnancy are acknowledged and compassion is shown for the mother – who is losing the care of her fifth child.

The judge concludes that there is no alternative to adoption for this baby, who was born prematurely with a heart condition and requires complex care. Stories like this are potentially powerful in challenging the idea that courts ‘rubber stamp’ adoption plans without proper scrutiny.

The family’s confidentiality is protected but enough detail is provided to allow readers to understand the reasons for the decision and the care that was taken to ensure fairness.

Extension of pilot

Reporting is now permitted of public and private law in the three original pilot courts. In 16 others, report of public law has been permitted since January 2024, with private law cases being added later.

In these areas, transparency is now the default position, providing this is safe and not disruptive. Family members are free to talk to reporters and their words can be quoted for the first time.

Key documents, such as threshold documents and chronologies, will be disclosed to journalists in full and can be quoted providing they are anonymised.

Judges, legal representatives and court experts can be named, as can the local authority and its senior managers.

Safeguards for families and professionals

There are a number of protective measures in place:

• Only recognised journalists – those who carry a UK press card – and authorised legal bloggers are allowed into the court.
• Family names and identifying details must be anonymised.
• Individual social workers, team managers and guardians cannot be identified unless this is ordered by the court.

Encouraging signs for social workers

As a social worker with years of experience in court work, I faced this change with trepidation, mindful of the death threats I had received and the impact of hostile reporting following child death inquiries.

At the same time, I recognised the need for justice to be seen to be done and the ways in which the secrecy of the system exacerbated families’ fears about justice. It remains to be seen how this change will affect social workers and their relationships with families over the longer term but there are encouraging signs.

Sensitive reporting has the potential to reveal the complexity of the work and can highlight what is going well as well as empowering families with accurate information and providing accountability in line with social work values.

“Consistently high standards” of social work practice have earned Cafcass an across-the-board outstanding rating in its latest national inspection by Ofsted.

The inspectorate praised the family court body – England’s largest social work employer – for the “remarkable” achievement of delivering high-quality practice across its 19 service areas and for improving from the high baseline set by its 2018 inspection.

Then, it was rated outstanding overall and for local and national leadership, and good for the quality and effectiveness of its public and private law practice. When inspectors returned in February this year, they found leadership still outstanding and that the quality of public and private law practice had improved to the same level.

This is despite the organisation having managed “unprecedented demand” for its services in the wake of Covid-19 and the resulting “challenging delays” for children involved in court proceedings.

Praise for practice and management

Inspectors praised family court advisers (FCAs) and guardians for placing children at the forefront of their practice and for the quality of their direct work, assessments and safeguarding practice, while hailing senior leaders for providing the “scaffolding for outstanding practice to flourish”.

This included Together for children and families, its practice framework introduced in 2021, a “highly impressive” training offer and “comprehensive” health and wellbeing provision.

However, amid increasing staff turnover – linked to annual pay rises at lagging consistently behind those for local authorities – Ofsted said that Cafcass’s leaders recognised that standards would be hard to maintain without a “skilled and committed workforce”.

‘Unprecedented demand’

In the wake of the pandemic, Cafcass faced significantly greater demand, with a 26% rise in the number of open cases from March 2020 to April 2021. This was due to cases taking much longer to conclude – due to reduced court availability – and increased demand for private law.

Though the number of open cases has since fallen back to pre-Covid levels, Ofsted said Cafcass had faced “unprecedented demand” and “challenging delays for children”, which remained an issue because of ongoing family court backlogs.

Inspectors Cafcass’s prioritisation protocol – under which lower-risk private law cases have been held by managers until they can be allocated to an FCA in some areas – had been “highly effective” in managing demand.

Ofsted said it had meant children at greatest risk were promptly allocated an FCA, while protecting staff workloads, thereby supporting high-quality practice.

FCAs ‘making exceptional difference to children’

In private law more generally, inspectors found FCAs were making an “exceptional difference to children’s lives” through the “great skill, respect and appropriate rigour” that they applied to a “hugely complex, emotive and challenging area of work”.

The quality of safeguarding letters – short reports FCAs write to the family court following initial safeguarding enquiries that summarise the child’s circumstances and highlight any welfare concerns or risks – was “excellent”, said Ofsted.

It delivered a similar verdict on the calibre of section 7 reports, which provide more detailed advice to the court on a child’s best interests, generally in cases where there are disputes between parents about a child’s residence or contact, often involving alleged domestic abuse.

It found that these were based on “highly effective assessment work” and had a “relentless focus on the child” and their needs, while their recommendations were “well evidenced, appropriate, proportionate and in children’s best interests”.

While FCAs undertook parental interviews respectfully, non-judgmentally and sensitively, they evaluated adults’ behaviour with “the clear purpose of understanding the impact on the child and establishing what is in the child’s best interests”.

Children facing long delays

Ofsted said that “too many children experience delay in private law proceedings, resulting in uncertainty about their future living arrangements”.

According to latest Cafcass data, as of January 2024, 7,223 children were involved in private law cases that had been open for at least a year, of whom, 2,930 children had been in proceedings lasting 100+ weeks.

The inspectorate said that the causes of delay were multiple, that FCAs “resolutely focus on driving children’s cases to a resolution as swiftly as possible” and that delays were starting to reduce.

It also pointed to the success of a pilot to reduce delays in rule 16.4 cases – where a guardian is appointed to represent the child because of the complexity of the case – which is now standard practice across the country.

Ofsted also noted the “detrimental impact” on “too many” children from delays in public law cases, notably in care proceedings, but again praised Cafcass practitioners for working collaboratively with councils to shorten the length of proceedings.

‘Effective and child-focused’ practice having tangible impact

More broadly, inspectors found children’s guardians’ “effective and child-focused” practice was having “a tangible and positive impact on children’s lives”.

As with FCAs in private law, Ofsted praised guardians’ use of introductory letters to children to help them understand what was happening to them and why the practitioner would be visiting them, as well as their creative use of direct work to understand children’s needs and views.

Guardians showed “sensitivity, tenacity and care” in building “trusting relationships” with children, seeing them as often as possible to establish their wishes and feelings, which was done “impressively quickly”.

They were also “highly effective and rigorous” in identifying risks to children, escalating these where necessary with the local authority. In addition, they worked with “compassion and empathy” with parents, though always with a “resolute focus on the child’s wellbeing”.

The inspection report also praised the high quality of guardians’ reports and their “sensitively evidenced recommendations”, following consideration of all permanence options for the child.

One area for improvement was the quality of final letters sent by guardians to independent reviewing officers at the end of proceedings, which are designed to provide IROs with relevant information to help their ongoing scrutiny of the child’s plan. Ofsted found that while some of these were clear and detailed, “too many lack sufficient detail about the child’s ongoing needs, risks and strengths”.

‘Inspirational’ senior leadership

Ofsted reserved particular praise for Cafcass’s “inspirational, innovative, and extremely child-focused” senior leaders, saying that their ambition to provide an “exceptional experience for every child, everywhere, every time” permeated through the organisation.

It said their introduction of “incredibly child focused” practice and management quality standards had provided staff with a framework that promoted consistently high-quality practice.

The Together for children and families practice framework had “a real focus on what matters most to children” and had been “instrumental in promoting practice that is kind, sensitive and respectful”, with children’s welfare and safety at the forefront.

Leaders had also provided practitioners with “an exceptional range of practice aides”, while Cafcass’s “highly impressive” training offer equipped social workers with the skills to practise well.

The report praised the “significantly improved” management oversight, which was promoting “accountability and consistency of practice”.

This had resulted in part from a boost to management capacity through Cafcass’s creation of a tier of assistant service managers to line manage some FCAs and guardians.

As part of this, the provision of group supervision and situational supervision – which relates to specific concerns that arise in a case – was highly valued by staff in enabling them to reflect on children’s lives.

Workforce and pay concerns

The report also highlighted Cafcass’s health and wellbeing offer, which includes wellbeing days, in addition to annual leave, and access to counselling, and said morale was high across the organisation, with staff feeling “highly valued and extremely well supported”.

However, the report also flagged up the recruitment and retention challenges Cafcass was facing, significantly caused by “the lack of pay parity with local authority salaries”. This was a result of the family court body being tied to civil service pay deals and being unable to offer market supplements, unlike councils.

Though its vacancy rate, at 8% as of last year, was below the 18.9% in local authority children’s services, the organisation’s annual turnover rate – 15.5% in the year to June 2023 – was similar to councils’ (15.9% in the year to September 2023).

In 2023-24, Cafcass staff were given a 4% pay rise, with most also receiving a non-consolidated £1,500 payment, close to the settlement received by council social workers on similar salaries in England.

However, pay rises at Cafcass had lagged behind council settlements in six of the previous seven years.

Ofsted said senior leaders were working with Cafcass’s sponsor government department, the Ministry of Justice, to secure the best possible pay deal for staff within the civil service rules.

However, the report added: “Leaders recognise that without a skilled and committed workforce, the standards of practice that have been achieved will be hard to maintain.”

‘Every single decision for children matters’

In response to the report, Cafcass chief executive Jacky Tiotto thanked staff for “helping secure this important outcome” and said she was particularly pleased that Ofsted had highlighted how practitioners gave “critical and enduring advice to the family court, that centres on children’s safety, welfare and best interests”.

“All our advice and every single decision matters,” she added. “I am so pleased that our focus and ambitions in this regard are making a difference and supporting continuous improvement and change for children.”

She said Cafcass would use the feedback from the inspection to inform implementation of its current improvement plan.

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.”

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
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