[Solved] Cafcass complaint

Well.....I received my complaints response, and have to say mega disappointed at the way they have tried to dismiss the wrong doing of the cafcass officer. It basically reads as, "yes, we did wrong, but we apologise". They have not made any attempt to correct the wrongs. Seems they just want to sweep it under the carpet.

There are some blatant lies being told too, which lead to me to believe more and more that cafcass are just trying to cover their own asses.

For example, my court order says that contact is "unsupervised", although for one session a month it was taking place for 4 hours at a supported contact centre, run by untrained church volunteers. So no one is qualified there to make observations or recommendations, they just are there to ensure smooth running of the place. It even says in the contact centre literature that the place is no a sueprvised centre.

Now, one of my complaint points was that the cafcass officer arranged to attend at the contact centre to observe and see how contact was going. She didnt turn up, and didnt contact me in advance to advise of this or explain why she did not attend. Turns out that in the complaint response, her reason is because, wait for it..............the contact centre staff have observed contact and reported back to cafcass that there have been no issues with my care of my son.

So...........I am having unsupervised court ordered contact, yet I am secretly being observed and having reports written about contact which are being sent to cafcass!! Now either way you look at it, I am being lied to. If indeed reports are being written about me without my knowledge, Cafcass have lied to me. If they are just saying this to cover up why she didnt attend the observation as agreed, then that is also a lie.

I have asked the cc today by email if written contact reports do exist, and if so, for copies of them.

There are many other lies in the report too....the CO is telling a different story to what actually happened. It's disgusting. It's like my points are being dismissed and I'm being told, oh don't worry about it, but we are sorry.

So.....I think my only option now is to go forward to the ombudsman and ask for their assistance.

Simon

Hi Simon,

yes goto the ombudsman - but you will need your signature from your MP to support this. Make an appointment with the local constituency office. The key thing is you have objected to the claims and it technically remains under investigation. There will be a lag and no outcome will occur within the next few months - but the whole point is to register your disatisifaction - and raise it in court as it is evident the agency wishes to be unhelpful here.

You have to raise your complaint with the ombudsman, usually they are less biased & independent........ :unsure:

I know how you feel & have gone through similar but I'm afraid the system is so biased it's pathetic, or should I say corrupt!!

One day someone in power will hopefully realize the harm the family courts does to children 🙁

I won't hold my breath though

Cheers Boycie for the pointers towards the MP and ombudsman - definitely my next port of call.

Loddy - I can't really be disappointed with their response when I expected them to skirt round the issues, brush it under the carpet and defend one of their own at the expense of the truth and the treatment of one of their service users.

I knew I would have to go to the ombudsman from the word go - however I suppose part of me though they might have been reasonable.

After mulling over the content of their reply to my complaint, there are many glaring inconsistencies that I will expose and highlight to the ombudsman. I have a day of football derbies to watch tomorrow with my dad and bro, so cafcass can wait a bit, but after all that I will get cracking with escalating things to the ombudsman.

I found the service managers reply laughable really. One of my points was that I found it unprofessional that the CO tried to extract info from my mother that related specifically to whether I had suffered depression before. My mother told her no. Now as far as I am concerned, depression is a medical condition and thus is part of ones medical history. Yet Cafcass deny that they tried to discuss my medical history. Are they for real?? You can bet your bottom dollar that if my mum had said, "yeah he had depression", then that would have been the highlight of the cafcass report. So when they tell me that they didn't try to get hold of info relating my medical history, I have to laugh in their face.

They certainly are a bunch of lying, corrupt so and so's.

But this fight isn't over. It has only just begun. Hopefully the ombudsman will see the truth and sort them out.

Like I said earlier too, I discovered more corruption and lies relating to the contact centre arrangement too. Fancy cafcass arranging use of a supported contact centre and then secretly sanctioning the untrained staff there to make written reports on me and my son. It makes you laugh really...are church volunteers, some in their 70's qualified to provide contact assessments to court??

Well, that's if these reports even exist, which will show cafcass up for making up more lies.

The insulting bit at the end was when they said that they did not support my complaint, but it must be difficult for parents in these situations. Too f***king right it's difficult. How patronising and dismissive - especially when cafcass cause so many problems and treat fathers like dirt.

No wonder Mr Slim despise this clown organisation lol.

But hey, they have shown themselves up as a laughing stock. Now is the time to expose them.

Simon.

I can't put into words how much I hate that shower of s**t they are completely above the law, yeah my ex stopped me seeing my Girls but I lay the blame directly with them, from the outset they were [censored] bent on stopping me from seeing my Girls and they did it maliciously from the word go, I dealt with 7 "officers" in total and they were all exactly the same, thing is they used to be part of probation and without going into to much detail I deal with Probation officers day in and day out and I can see where they get it from Cafftwats treat you as an EX con like probate do I felt like I've been on trial for the past 9 months, the only thing I agreed with out of all the officers and all the reports was the 5 last words in the S7 report " Cafftwats are no longer involved" 🙂

Slim.....i envy you that you no longer have cafcass involved in your case.

Whilst i was posting i received an email from the lady at the contact centre responding to my enquiry about what information they had given to cafcass regarding my contact. Her answer was that they do not do anything like that and do not report on contact.

Therefore that is evidence that cafcass lied to me to cover up why the CO did not attend the agreed observation time at the contact centre.

They are blatantly trying to cover up misconduct. I now have those f**ckers by the [censored]. Cant wait to speak to the mp.

In fact i get to cross examine the CO in court if i want to next month, and will get to expose her as a liar in front of the judge. Her professional reputation is going to die.

Shocked though that they doing a cover up job 🙁

Hi Simon,

what I find very interesting is the fact that Cafcass contacted your mother !
I mean no disrespect to your mum but I was under the impression that they would talk to the mother
and father of the child involved, i.e. yourself and your ex.....
So why did they contact your mum ? Just to see if they could glean any further information about you?
I personally would view this as intrusive if not invasion of privacy....

For the record I have to say in LnH 's case they were ok....and are no longer involved but I didn't trust them
in any case .

Take care
Kirsten

Beware mate the Contact Centre workers are just as biased and sexist as the rest of them the manager of my local contact centre is a right [censored] always siding with my ex the bint wrecked my day after the first contact on sat I had the wench on the phone for 2 hours saying I should be concentrating on seeing my daughter and not just wanting to get back at my ex, she also said what do you think you will gain mr slim by taking your ex back to court?

I couldn't believe it not one mention how well the contact went she wasn't even present although the other staff were great, she even wrote a letter to the court explaining how my ex had been fully cooperative since the order was made when she herself said she couldn't take things forward because my ex was ignoring all her calls to prolong contact for another 2 months.

She also said to the court that there was a waiting list thats why it took so long for the first contact session when infact the other manager told me they had hardly any referrals due to the new self referral system which the non resident parent has to get a code to send to the ex then they refer online and all the vindictive mums aren't bothering to refer as all the control has been given to them, the whole system is corrupt it stinks to high [censored], I'm going to have to bite my lip as if cafftwats get involved again they will give me bad reports for sure from the CC

My ex now phones her up almost daily slagging me off saying I'm still in love with her and this is the only way I get to see her and I'm just using seeing my daughter as a way to see her, unreal

Kirsten,

The CO conducted interviews with both sets of grandparents. But apparently, according to the cafcass service manager, this is down to the CO's professional judgment and therefore is not a problem. However, when you look at what actually took place and what the CO did, it is a major problem. She only reported negative information about me that she obtained from the maternal grandparents, and she tried to obtain information from my mother that she could have reported on in a negative fashion - namely my mental health. Thankfully my mum didn't give her anything she could have used against me. The truth is I never had any issues with depression, so the point is moot. But she would have used anything she could have to paint the picture of me being a risk to my son. She failed in that attempt.

But for Cafcass to say that they are not biased, when they clearly went out of there way to make my ex look like an angel, and me look like a monster, is shockingly bad.

I now really and truly despise that organisation for what they have done to me, and how they try to keep me from my son, and how they try to deprive a kid of his dad.

But there is no more powerful motivation than that of a dad that fights for his kid. And if these clowns think they will beat me, they need to think again. I will never give up, I will never quit. I will fight them, and I will expose them. Cafcass picked on the wrong dad.

Simon.

Spent the best part of this afternoon and evening going through the CAFCASS response to my complaint with a fine tooth comb....and I have to say that I'm even more mortified by it than I was when I skimmed over it whilst at work on friday.

In addition to the lies the CO has told in the response, they really show a lack of understanding of what they are actually doing as advisors to the court.

One of the points that I found so upsetting and shocking is the part where I called them out about not attending the contact session as agreed. Of course the CO lied about that and said that she had spoken to the contact centre staff, and was assured that all was ok. But like I mentioned, the contact centre do not keep written records of contact. I then went on to call them out about how they were going to feed back to court on progression of contact if they had not attended a single session. The response?? CAFCASS will go by the contact centre feedback and only attend if necessary.

But....we have already established that the contact centre have stated they do not provide any reports on contact.

To me that show CAFCASS as being totally clueless!

I complained about one thing, and they answered a totally different issue, and in most cases ignored the actual issue I was attempting to resolve.

But anyway, I have bashed out a response to the response which highlights to the ombudsman what needs to be looked at.

I just hope the ombudsman can see sense, and see that CAFCASS are a dangerous organisation that actively jeapordise kids relationships with their fathers.

If not....well I have lost the battle with CAFCASS 🙁

Simon.

The system just does not work, it's as simple as that. Personally I don't believe that CO's are trained well enough to be able to do the job correctly and they certainly don't seem to have the time to deal with matters correctly either, constantly being rushed onto the next case.
In my own scenario they have not listened to me over the past 3 times they have been involved, if they had and had listened to what what I had said and asked some very simple questions of my child I wouldn't be where I am today.
Even when things are in the favour of the NR parent they still water it down and try and make the resident parent sound good.
I would push your complaint forward and I would definitely get something in writing from the CC whether feedback is being sent to the CO. Either way they're in the wrong.