Ministry of Justice sets out plan to reduce delays in care and supervision proceedings

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published its plans to reduce delays in the system of care proceedings, introducing new responsibilities for local authorities, the courts and Cafcass to ensure that cases are dealt with as efficiently as possible.

Based on the findings of the 2006 Review of Child Care Proceedings in England and Wales, the report notes that no single part of the system is responsible for the delays experienced.

The publication of the plans, Establishment of a system-wide target for reducing unnecessary delay in care and supervision proceedings, follows the observation of the Laming Report that many care cases take more than a year to resolve and Lord Laming's recommendation that the Ministry of Justice should establish system-wide targets that laid responsibility on all participants in the care proceedings system to work to address the problem.

The main provisions are:

Incomplete applications

Local authorities will be expected to make sure that they always include completed copies of core assessments with applications to court, which the MoJ says are frequently either missing or incomplete, causing delays.

Legal Aid

The MoJ will encourage local authorities to work with parents to ensure that they receive legally-aided advice before case proceedings commence, in an attempt to resolve more cases prior to formal proceedings being issued.

CAFCASS

The MoJ says it will “work with CAFCASS” to make sure that 97% of public law cases have a guardian allocated to them.

Case management

The MoJ will work with the courts to improve case management, by fast-tracking unopposed cases and encouraging more robust case management, coupled with “intelligent” listing of hearings – in particular, not listing Final Hearings until the key issues have been identified and narrowed. The MoJ says that it will work with the courts to ensure that cases suitable for early resolution are dealt with in under 30 weeks, the vast majority of cases are dealt with in less than 50 weeks, and those that genuinely need a longer period that this are completed where possible in under 80 weeks.

Expert witnesses

The report notes that the use of expert witnesses in pre-commencement proceedings has increased markedly despite the issues in most cases remaining very similar and says that local authorities are “increasingly reluctant to commission robust pre- proceedings assessments in line with the requirements of the President of the on the use of experts in family Family Division’s Practice Direction proceedings”. Consequently, the Ministry of Justice says that it will support the President of the Family Division and the Family Division Liaison Judges to “increase compliance with the experts Practice Direction”.

Performance monitoring

The MoJ says it will establish local performance monitoring groups based on the HMCS care centre network. These will be composed of representatives from Cafcass, the Legal Services Commission  and HMCS together with representatives from local authority children’s services and legal teams and other interested parties such as private practice lawyers involved in care proceedings. The groups will be expected to meet at least quarterly and to report on their work to the MoJ every six months.

New Supporting Indicator

In the longer-term, the MoJ will begin to gather data on the time it takes to conclude care proceedings and also monitor the time it takes for local authorities to provide the courts with missing documentation, with a view to establishing a Supporting Indicator from 2011.

A copy of the plans can be downloaded here