Public Affairs

Ofsted Consultation on the Future inspection of Cafcass - Help us Submit our Proposal

Details: Published: Monday, 02 November 2020 16:29

Ofsted launched a consultation on proposals for the future inspection of Cafcass. We would like you to help us submit your experience, suggestions and proposal by completing our survey and rate your experience with Cafcass.

This consultation seeks a range of views from those working with children and families in the family courts on how The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) should inspect Cafcass from 2021. The consultation ends on 11 November 2020 and the proposed new framework will be implemented from February 2021. So please do not delay and complete this survey by Tuesday 10th November at 9am. Any responses received after that will still help us in other feedback, reports, dicussions with Cafcass, with the Govermnent, media comments,etc but will not form part of the official submission.

The proposed new framework is intended to create a ‘whole-system’ approach of shorter inspections, with more regular contact in-between. More frequent engagement will help Ofsted to build a better picture of Cafcass’s practice.

The consultation proposals include:

• a 3-yearly national judgement inspection

• focused visits between judgement inspections, or inclusion in joint targeted area inspections

• annual sharing of a self-evaluation of frontline practice in both public and private law

• an annual engagement meeting between Ofsted and the Cafcass chief executive and senior leadership team

in 2018 Ofsted inspected Cafcass rating them as "outstanding" in their report of 28 March 2018. Our survey uses statements extracted from the Ofsted inspection report to rate their performance on a similar basis and see whether your experience reflects Ofsted's findings. The questions are short and in a multiple-choice format with the opportunity to give explain the reasons for your ratings. If you don't know the answer to any question you can simply respond with an "N/A" (Not Applicable) option.

This anonymous survey has quite a few questions, but other than optional comment sections, most only take a few moments to respond to. It's really important that we hear the views of as many of those who actually have experience with Cafcass as possible. The bigger the response, the more difficult it is to ignore.

Thanks in advance.

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