Children and Adoption Bill

I completely agree. I do not need to say any more. I have been making the point that the hon. Lady has outlined. It is something that works. The more that we can take such proceedings out of the court procedure, the more likely the process is to succeed. I do not think that any of us would dispute that. I have concerns about CAFCASS, to which I shall briefly return. The Minister said that she would fund CAFCASS with increased resources. Yet its budget for this year is frozen, which effectively means a £4 million shortfall. That is at a time when more work is being imposed on CAFCASS. There are still difficulties although I accept that there have been improvements in overcoming the time delays for allocating officers to cases. However, the courts are still congested and it takes far too long before cases are scheduled and come through. We agree with the proposal to ask CAFCASS to take on greater work with risk assessments and various other things, but none of it, however well-intentioned, will work unless properly trained, well-resourced professionals at the coalface put them into operation. The same holds for properly trained social workers who undertake preventive and monitoring work in the field and enable cases to come to court. I have attended far too many family courts where good social workers had not worked on the case when it first came to court. I was in court one day when not a single social worker had worked on the case when it first came to court.