Update on Complex Children Cases

The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (‘CAFCASS’) has recently published a new assessment framework to support its Family Court Advisers to assist in supporting children, who are involved in private law proceedings. It has recently come up with a new framework to support their work and help assess the impact that family law proceedings can have on children.

What does all of this mean for you, if you are involved in proceedings concerning arrangements for your children? Pearson Hards have put together a useful summary below, to help you.

The Child Impact Assessment Framework is “a structured framework that sets out how children may experience parental separation and how this can be recognised and evaluated at Cafcass, to bring about better outcomes for children.”

The aim is to help Family Court Advisors promptly identify and accurately assess what is happening for each child, and to provide reliable and balanced reporting to the court, when advising it on what CAFCASS considers to be in the child’s best interests.

The Child Impact Assessment Framework brings together new and current guidance into four guides, which Family Court Advisors can use to assess the impact on the child of different case factors, including:

• Domestic abuse where children have been harmed directly or indirectly, for example from the effects of coercive control;
• Harmful conflict as a result of a longstanding court case, or hostility between parents, which can have a hugely detrimental effect upon the child;
• Child refusal or resistance to spend time with one of their parents, which includes guidance on parental alienation and hostility;
• Other forms of harmful parenting, such as substance misuse or mental health difficulties.

All Family Court Advisors including family law practitioners dealing with private law cases will receive mandatory training in applying the framework. The training is now being rolled out across CAFCASS service areas, with all practitioners expected to be trained by March 2019.

Therefore if any of the four factors listed above are raised within the proceedings, then the Child Impact Assessment Framework will give an indication as to how the Family Court Advisors should approach the case. The likelihood is that this will become a strong influencer in the outcome of any case and any safeguarding concerns will continue to be viewed very seriously by the Court.

The Child Impact Assessment Framework can be found on the CAFCASS website: https://www.cafcass.gov.uk/grown-ups/parents-and-carers/divorce-and-separation/the-child-impact-assessment-framework-and-its-development/

If you are looking for any advice with respect to private children matters, then please do not hesitate to contact Pearson Hards for advice and assistance in the strictest of confidence.