Family Courts: Guardians

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with reference to the answer of 3 November 2009, Official Report, column 945W, on family courts: guardians, how many cases the Children and Family Care Advisory and Support Services has allocated to self employment guardians in each area in each of the last six months. (300570)

The allocation of cases to self employed guardians is a matter for CAFCASS which has supplied the following data¹:

¹ This data is from the CAFCASS national Case Management System (CMS). The unit of measurement is cases, which can involve multiple application types and multiple reports for a family with multiple children.

*Trend of allocations to SEC guardians for the last six months*
	Cases allocated between 1 May to 31 October 2009
Area	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Total
N1 (North and South Tyne)	0	0	1	0	0	0	1
N2 (Durham and Teesside)	3	4	1	0	0	0	8
N3 (Lancashire and Cumbria)	4	3	2	31	0	1	41
N5 (West Yorkshire)	5	2	0	1	0	0	8
N6 (South Yorkshire)	7	0	1	0	0	0	8
N7 (Greater Manchester)	1	0	0	0	0	13	14
C2 (Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire)	1	5	12	2	3	1	24
C3 (Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire)	5	1	0	0	0	1	7
C4 (Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire)	1	0	0	0	0	0	1
C5 (Birmingham, Black Country, Solihull)	11	6	4	0	0	1	22
C6 (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex)	14	15	11	4	4	5	53
C7 (Cheshire and Merseyside)	0	1	3	1	0	0	5
S1 (Avon, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire)	3	0	1	0	1	0	5
S2 (Thames Valley)	19	10	7	13	4	6	59
S3 (Greater London)	47	52	49	41	46	65	300
S4 (Kent)	16	15	11	9	14	7	72
S5 (Sussex and Surrey)	20	13	13	14	25	10	95
S6 (Hampshire, Dorset, Isle of Wight)	4	8	8	14	8	0	42
S7 (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset)	6	10	7	2	6	13	44
Total	167	145	131	132	111	123	809

This data relates to self employed contractors employed in care cases (section 31 cases). C1 (Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire) and N4 (North and East Yorkshire and Humberside) have not allocated any new care cases to self employed contractors in the period covered in the table.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what recent representations he has received on the caseloads of guardians employed by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. (301006)

The allocation and management of guardians' caseloads is a matter for CAFCASS. The Secretary of State has received approximately 20 representations on CAFCASS performance in the last six months. A minority of these refer to the caseloads of guardians employed by CAFCASS.

Volume 501: debated on Tuesday 24 November 2009