5.3 Cafcass initial involvement and the safeguarding letter
As Cafcass is involved in family law cases involving children, all
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Cafcass have targets for sending the case to the Early Intervention Team. It can take three weeks or more from submitting an application to Cafcass starting their enquiries. Therefore, it may be useful for volunteers to set realistic expectations about timescales with clients who are making applications. An early intervention officer, who is a trained social worker, will then carry out a series of checks, as follows:
What is a safeguarding telephone interview? The person from Cafcass will have a script and will ask each parent questions about issues such as domestic abuse, substance abuse and mental health. The purpose is to establish whether there are any safeguarding concerns about the child which need to be addressed urgently.
Activity 2
Following the initial safeguarding enquiries, the early intervention officer will then write a safeguarding letter to the parents. This will be a short report on the outcomes of the safeguarding checks and any child welfare issues raised in the telephone interviews with the parents. Cafcass will send this letter via email to both parents separately before the first hearing and file it at court. Here is a copy of the safeguarding letter sent to parents.
Did you know?
Cafcass will not send the letter to the parent(s) if there is information that would put the child or parent at risk. If this is the case, then a Cafcass Court Advisor will ask the judge before the first hearing whether it would be safe to send the letter.
Following the safeguarding checks, the local or regional Cafcass teams will pick up the case after the initial safeguarding letter has been sent out.
5.2 What is Cafcass?