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Children and young people feedback line: 0808 175 3333

Feedback

We welcome feedback on our services, please complete the feedback forms to help us understand your experience to help us improve our services.

If we are currently working with you or have just completed our work with you, you will find a feedback link and QR code in welcome /introduction or goodbye letters we have sent you. These links can be used to provide feedback on our services.

If you haven’t received one of these letters, please use one of the forms below.

Although we try hard to provide high quality services to children and their families, we know that sometimes you might be unhappy with the way we have worked with you. If you are unhappy, please tell your Cafcass worker or their manager as soon as possible so that they can quickly understand your concerns and try to put things right.

Complaints

Why complaints matter

  • We want to know if something has gone wrong, so that we can put things right as quickly as possible.
  • Hearing from you helps us to understand how you are affected by the way we work, and the impact of this on you and your family.
  • We need to understand this to make improvements to how we work with you, and future families.

Please tell us if something has gone wrong.

If you feel comfortable doing so, tell the Cafcass officer as soon as you feel something has gone wrong or you have a concern about our work. The Cafcass officer, or their manager, may be best placed to put things right quickly. To avoid confusion, it might be best to put your concern in writing.

If you want to contact our independent Complaints and Correspondence team you can do this securely by using our contact us form. Or by writing to Cafcass PO Box 5076, Slough, SL1 0RX or phoning 0300 456 4000

Once your court proceedings have finished we will be limited in the actions we can take and the response we can provide to you. We will still consider complaints received after the end of court proceedings, and whether we need to make changes to our practice to improve our service for children and families. 

You can work with someone you trust to submit your complaint, or they could contact us on your behalf.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman – the organisation that makes final decisions on Cafcass complaints – has some tips on making a complaint about UK government services that you may find helpful when sharing your complaint with us.

What if you don't want to raise a complaint?

If you want to give us feedback on our work with you without speaking with us further, you can do this using our feedback forms above. You can do this anonymously if you wish. We will record and learn from your feedback, using this to help us improve our services, but we will not contact you about it further.

What to expect if you raise a complaint with us

If we are not taking your concerns forward as a complaint within our complaints policy – for example if you have written to us with a challenge to a Cafcass officer’s assessment or recommendations for the court – we will explain why this is our decision and will provide you with information on any options available to you.

We will acknowledge your complaint within two working days of receiving it, and the person allocated to look into your complaint will contact you to offer a discussion about your concerns and how to take things forward.

This conversation will include our likely timeframe for responding to your complaint. If we think that an early resolution of your complaint is possible, we will try to complete this within one week. If we feel your complaint needs a closer look, we will aim to complete an investigation within 20 working days. If we’re delayed for any reason, we will keep you informed.

If you are unable to, or prefer not to, speak directly with us, we can communicate with you by email.

We might need to contact you again, as we work through your complaint. We will keep you updated.

If we investigate your complaint, we will send you a written response. For early resolution we will do this by phone or in writing, depending on your preference. We will set out our findings and anything we’re doing to put things right, or to improve things for future families.

We won’t share your complaint with the other parent or others involved in the court proceedings.

At the end of our work we will explain how to refer your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman if you are not happy with how we have responded.