Cafcass Positive Co-parenting Programme

The Child Impact Assessment Framework (CIAF), which provides practitioners with a structured guidance aid to support assessment, includes a range of available restorative options.

These options include the Cafcass Positive co-Parenting Programme (CPPP) which can be offered to families experiencing harmful conflict, whilst they have ongoing involvement with the family court.

The CIAF harmful conflict guidance helps practitioners to identify situations that may benefit from the CPPP and includes suitability criteria to assist with this.

The suitability criteria include:

• a willingness of both parents to engage;
• ongoing court involvement is deemed necessary; and
• the impact of harmful conflict has been identified as the most significant concern for the children involved.

Suitability is assessed by a Family Court Advisor and agreed in discussion with the parents and courts. (The term ‘parents’ is used to refer to the most significant carers for the children involved and those who are named as ‘parties’ within the court proceedings.)

The Cafcass Positive co-Parenting Programme  is a programme of four sessions offered to some families within private law court proceedings.

The programme aims to provide an opportunity for parents to gain a deeper understanding of each other’s positions and of their child(ren’s) experience of their dispute. It also seeks to support positive change by helping parents and their child(ren) identify some of the barriers and solutions that would enable arrangements for the children to be resolved.

The overall objective is to help families achieve safe agreements that meet the needs of children as well as their parents.

 A number of FCAs within each of our regions have been trained to provide the programme; therefore it is available across the country to children and their families with private law family court proceedings who are assessed as suitable.