3.68 Surrey and Sussex Area sets out its objectives for improving family court services in its 2008 – 09 Business Plan. In accordance with National HMCS Breakthrough commitments, the Area has outlined two key objectives specifically aimed at improving family services:
1 give greater priority and urgency to public law cases and 2 encourage more families to resolve issues themselves.
The Area intends to introduce the following measures to meet these:
1 Improve the percentage of public law cases completed within target in county courts and magistrates’ courts by;
- establishing a unified family centre in Surrey and undertaking a review of Sussex arrangements to determine whether an additional Care Centre is required and whether unified administration is feasible
- applying the PLO effectively
- monitoring performance through the Local Family Justice Councils (LFJCs) and - encouraging increased use of family mediation.
2 Reduce the number of contested hearings in county courts and FPCs by; - encouraging the use of mediation and
- working closely with CAFCASS to mitigate their resource problems.
3.69 We found that the Area was dedicating a significant amount of time and effort into unifying the administration of family court services in Sussex and the creation of one family court centre for Surrey. A steering group had been set up to consider the options for unifying administration in Sussex. This had explored several options and, having taken account of a range of factors including the impact on service users, a decision was made to take a staged approach to amalgamating administrative services in each Local Justice Area. In Surrey it was decided, in parallel with local police restructuring plans, that the best option was to bring together all family work in one courthouse. A feasibility study was set up to consider the estate issues involved in this. This is ongoing.
3.70 We recognise that the Area is following national policy in its decision to unify services. However, we are concerned that we found so little evidence of delivery planning around the Area’s unification initiatives in both Surrey and Sussex. HMCS HQ can provide a
framework, guidance and workshops to help Areas with the family unification process. While representatives of Sussex Area courts attended a workshop early in 2007, the current Area management team appears to have little awareness of assistance available from the centre and is yet to make use of this support in their plans to unify family services in Surrey.
3.71 We would have expected the Area, at the outset of this project, to have set down its business case, outlining, for example: key benefits and disadvantages of unification; key stakeholders to involve and how; a timeframe with milestones; risks and contingencies; and an equality impact assessment.
3.72 We found the same lack of planning around each of the Area’s family service improvement objectives.
3.73 An example of this is the lack of delivery planning to encourage the uptake of mediation services. Mediation services have been withdrawn from Sussex FPCs as the level of family business has dropped. We also found inconsistencies in the quality and quantity of relevant information for service users (see paragraphs 3.10 and 3.11). We learned that key individuals in local mediation agencies had offered to help devise and implement a plan to encourage the use of, or signposting to, mediation services. However, the Area has yet to develop either an internal or joint agency strategy or plan to fulfil this objective within its given timeframe. 3.74 Any effective strategy will reflect the diversity of those whom it will affect. Surrey and Sussex
HMCS is yet to fully understand the diversity, including culture, of its family service users. It does not collect diversity data on its service users or work with agencies and the community to understand its population. To do so would help to place service users at the heart of any family services development, from unification to improving information to potential applicants, and currently the Area cannot effectively demonstrate that it does this.
3.75 The Area must be commended, however, for committing resources to two dedicated Family Legal Services Managers – one for
Surrey and the other for Sussex. At a time when resources are stretched this move is a positive, strategic step. The Area also highlights this as one of its key strengths9, advocating this role
as providing consistency of approach and a link between administrative staff, magistrates and professional court users.
3.76 In practice, we did not find the
commitment to providing a consistent, unified approach to family services
Chichester County Court
demonstrated at senior level. We consider
that the Area’s senior management team has yet to embrace the concept of a unified family service for Surrey and Sussex Area. The general management approach respects the two areas as operationally autonomous and does not encourage Surrey and Sussex to find joint solutions.
Findings 25 3.77 We found little consistency of approach across or within Surrey and Sussex. There were
no systems in place for sharing good practice or, currently, for the Family Legal Services Managers to work together either to share information or to agree a consistent approach to their work. Administrative Family Section/Team Leads told us of previous opportunities to meet and share issues and ideas and of their regret that they no longer had a chance to do this. We found some examples where court staff were sharing their practices – for instance, the case progression spreadsheet created by staff at Horsham FHC and shared with two other county courts. However, there were no systems in place to capture these initiatives at Area level, assess their effectiveness and disseminate them appropriately.
3.78 The Area’s family services performance management systems, which could be used to bring consistency of practice and improvement to Surrey and Sussex, are embryonic. The Area’s Performance Manager has worked hard to identify relevant family data for capture in performance reports. However, reports do not comprehensively meet the needs of managers. In Surrey, the Family Legal Services Manager draws together her own family performance reports, which include greater detail about cases, such as progress, length and outcomes. Professional court users in Surrey tend to know about and use these rather than the Area reports. Currently, there are no systems in place to capture this report format at Area level or to share it with Sussex and we consider this to be a missed opportunity for improving the performance management of family services across Surrey and Sussex.