The family court service in England and Wales is facing a “clear and imminent crisis” because of a sustained increase in the number of child care cases, its most senior judge has said.
In an emergency statement issued through the judicial office, Sir James Munby, the president of the family division, said he could not simply ask lawyers or court staff to work harder. “The fact is that we are approaching a crisis for which we are ill-prepared and where there is no clear strategy to manage the crisis. What is to be done?” he asked.
The number of care cases being dealt with by the family courts in England and Wales has risen from an average of about 6,500 a year before 2009 to about 15,000 this year.
“If… the current rate of increase of [around] 20% were to continue for the next three years, by 2019-20 the figure would have climbed to over 25,000,” Munby said. “In the meantime – today – we face a clear and imminent crisis. What steps can be taken now?”
Standards should not be sacrificed in order to handle more cases, he cautioned. “The fact is that, on the ground, the system is – the people who make the system work are – at full stretch. We cannot, and I have for some time now been making clear that I will not, ask people to work harder. Everyone – everyone – is working as hard as they can.”
Munby said the reasons for the increase were not entirely clear. “There are, in principle, three possible causes for the increase: (1) that the amount of child abuse/neglect is increasing; (2) that local authorities are becoming more adept at identifying child abuse/neglect and taking action to deal with it; (3) that local authorities are setting more demanding standards – in other words, lowering the threshold for intervention.
“I do not believe that child abuse/neglect is rising by 14%, let alone 20% a year. So this cannot be the sole explanation. It follows that changes in local authority behaviour must be playing a significant role.”
There was unlikely to be any additional resources provided to help the judiciary, Munby said. Care cases, which can result in “life-long separations” between children and their parents, are of “unique gravity and importance”, he added.
If the system is not to “buckle under the pressure of ever-increasing caseloads”, there must be some improvements, streamlining and speeding up of court procedures.
One improvement advocated by Munby is the development of “problem-solving courts”, a US initiative that involves judges attempting to tackle the underlying problems that bring claimants or offenders repeatedly back to court.
Munby said: “We are all familiar with the excellent and immensely fruitful work being done in ever increasing numbers of cases in the ever expanding network of FDACs (family drug and alcohol courts). Another similar project – Pause – is now in rapid development, focusing on addressing the underlying problems of the all too many women who find themselves losing successive children in repeat care proceedings.
“A mother with problems can generate five, 10 or even more care cases down the years, as her successive children are taken into care. If we can only solve, as FDAC and Pause so successfully solve, the ‘problem’, then the consequence is a reduction in the number of new cases coming into the system.”
Responding to the judges’s concerns, Richard Watts, chair of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, said: “The number of children on child protection plans has increased by over 60% [since 2007], and these latest figures highlight the huge rise in care applications.
“But local authorities have faced significant funding cuts over this same period, and with such a big rise in demand for services, it’s vital that local authorities have the resources they need to keep children and young people safe.
“Councils are forced to make difficult choices when deciding how to allocate their increasingly scarce resources, and a 55% cut in early intervention funding since 2010/11 has made it difficult to deal with problems earlier while continuing to provide essential help and support to children at immediate risk of harm.”
