A LEADING Liverpool family barrister has spoken out about the “shortage” of specialist guardians in cases involving children in Merseyside.
Malcolm Sharpe, head of family law at Atlantic Chambers, says the dearth of guardians is causing delays in getting cases through the system.
The Children and Family Court Advisory Service (Cafcass) confirmed that by the end of January more than one in six cases had not been assigned a caseworker. The national average is just one in 25.
Cafcass says one of the reasons for the backlog is a spike in cases since the death of Baby P.
Mr Sharpe said it was a “worrying state of affairs”. He told LDP Legal: “Guardians play an essential role in making sure the interests of the child remain at the centre of the court’s concerns in these cases.
“The absence of a guardian at the start of the case means an important viewpoint is missing.
“Delays in proceedings are creating long backlogs of cases which should be dealt with as swiftly as possible.”
Mr Sharpe has been interviewed by BBC Radio 4 who are planning to highlight the situation in Law in Action.
In a statement, Cafcass said: “Cafcass is experiencing some delays in allocating care proceedings cases in Liverpool.
“This is a combination of national factors where we have seen a massive rise in care proceedings applications following the tragic death of Baby P and local factors.
“We have taken rapid action to reduce delays and the figure currently stands at 15.4% of unallocated workload for the end of January, 2009, compared to the national percentage of 3.9%.”
Cafcass chief executive Anthony Douglas added: “Public law allocations in many parts of the country have increased dramatically since November, as a result of the reviews undertaken by local authorities after the Baby P case became a matter of public concern. Whereas we had no delays in public law cases in Liverpool before this, we now have 32, and our resources are stretched. We are working hard to allocate each case as soon as possible and we have a strict priority system so urgent cases are always dealt with immediately.”
Mr Sharpe added: “Ensuring every child in every care case is represented by an experienced and specialist guardian has long been the gold standard by which the family justice system has prided itself.
“Considering the difficult circumstances experienced by many of these children when they come into the care system they should be given the very best chance of having their cases dealt with speedily and effectively.”
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