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BJSW Advance Access published online on October 11, 2006
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl346
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved

Article

Beyond Assessment: Social Work Intervention in Family Court Enquiries

Greg Mantle 1 *, Isabel Williams 2, Jane Leslie 3, Sarah Parsons 4, and Ray Shaffer 5

1 Reader in Social Work at Anglia Ruskin University, UK
2 Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Anglia Ruskin University, UK
3 Family Court Advisor, CAFCASS, Milton Keynes, UK
4 Service Manager, CAFCASS, Eastern Region, UK
5 Family Court Advisor, CAFCASS, Chelmsford, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Greg Mantle, E-mail: g.j.mantle{at}anglia.ac.uk


  Abstract

Most parents or carers who separate or divorce are able to make arrangements themselves about where their children will reside and how the children’s contact with the nonresident parent will be managed. A further group of parents or carers are able to come to agreement with the assistance of community- or court-based dispute resolution/ mediation services. There are times, however, when disputes cannot be resolved without recourse to the courts and, when this happens, the court will normally request that a welfare report be prepared by a CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) practitioner. While the boundary between assessment and intervention in social work is often less than clear, the commissioning of a court welfare report in family proceedings strongly suggests an assessment focus and appears to carry little expectation that the practitioner should intervene in order to meet the needs of the children or adults involved. This article presents recent research findings that illustrate ways in which CAFCASS practitioners do go beyond the assessment role expected of them in the course of the enquiries they undertake. Implications for policy and practice in this area of social work are then discussed.

Keywords: family court, social work assessment and intervention.
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