Anyone else alarmed by the new 'initiative' being rolled out by Cafcass - the government organisation deemed 'not fit for purpose' in the past by Chair of Chair of the UK Commons Public Accounts Committee - that includes the possibility of it stopping contact between child and parent due to parent alienation?!
First of all, this organisation has created a threat that ultimately harms the very people they are supposed to protect. Secondly, the article in The Guardian yesterday carefully avoids using gender pronouns, but concluded with a quote by the Chair of Families Need Fathers saying that this new approach was 'welcome news'. Strikes me that this initiative is at risk of being used (abused) more by malicious fathers than mothers. This concern is based on two observations.
One, witnessing the vindictive and extremely manipulative actions of the ex's of my SiL's as well as several friends. In each case they were incredibly vicious to their ex-wives and went to huge lengths to ruin them financially ('welcome to a life on benefits' / 'I'm going to make you spend every penny you have and your parents') as well as emotionally (telling Cafcass workers that they these women were unbalanced etc). Strangely, in each of the cases it was the ex having an affair that split the marriage up.
Two, in each case the Cafcass reps were poorly trained, often young, and not well trained in collecting and analysing evidence relying instead on subjective impressions. This is not just my impressions either as Ofsted has criticised Cafcass in the past for "no evidence of a consistent assessment model used by staff" and "•case records often did not show how Cafcass had come to its conclusions about children".
And this is the organisation that has developed this 'ground-breaking process' that can ultimately end in severing contact between a child and one parent?