Social work vacancies increased at Cafcass last year, amid a drop in the number of practitioners at the family courts body.
Cafcass's annual report for 2024-25 also showed that social work turnover, while stable year on year, was slightly higher than that seen in local authority children's services in England.
The news follows an Ofsted report that said "unrelenting demand" was overstretching workforce capacity at Cafcass.
However, despite these workforce pressures, the annual report showed practitioner caseloads had fallen year on year and identified evidence of practice improvements in internal audits, echoing Ofsted's most recent findings about the family courts body.
Increase in social work vacancies
Cafcass's social work vacancy rate rose sharply in the year to 31 March 2025, from 8.1% to 11.7%.
Though this was still well below the rate seen in local authority children's services - which was 17.3% as of 30 September 2024 - the gap between the two has narrowed in recent years. Cafcass's rate was 7.7% in 2023, when that for councils was 18.9%.
For the second consecutive year, the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) social workers at Cafcass fell, dropping by 2.2%, from 1,515.4 to 1,473.2, in the year to March 2025.
Cafcass's social work turnover was 15.1% in 2024-25, the same as in 2023-24 and a similar level to 2022-23. However, this is now higher than the rate for local authorities, which fell from 15.9% in 2022-23 to 13.8% in 2023-24.
Though the sickness absence rate for Cafcass social workers fell, from 5.8% in 2023-24 to 5.4% last year, this was above the 3.4% recorded for councils in 2023-24.
Pay gap concerns
Last year, unions Napo and UNISON, which represent staff at Cafcass, said that its family court advisers (FCAs) were "generally paid less than local authority social workers, despite doing work that is just as complex and often more emotionally demanding".
Though they did not publish data on this comparison, annual pay settlements for the majority of council practitioners in England have been higher than those for Cafcass counterparts over most of the past decade.
This has prompted concerns from Cafcass management and unions alike about the organisation becoming less competitive with councils on social work pay.
In its annual report, Cafcass cited London, Essex and the South West as "the most pressured areas losing the most social work practitioners and managers".
'Unrelenting demand overstretching social work capacity'
The annual report followed an Ofsted visit to Cafcass last year, which found that "unprecedented and unrelenting demand" was overstretching Cafcass's social work resource in some areas, with some FCAs saying their caseloads were too high.
However, social work caseloads have fallen at the family court body, as set out in the annual report.
The average caseload for practitioners in long-term teams fell from 18.8 to 18.2 in the year to 31 March 2025, with with those for FCAs in work to first hearing private law teams dropping from 37 to 32.4. The latter subsequently fell to 29.3 in August 2025.
Programme to improve social work turnover
Cafcass said it had set up a programme to improve social work turnover in areas where workforce pressures were "compromising capacity and progress with improvement".
Senior managers will report quarterly to an internal recovery board, including on sickness absence, performance, staff engagement, wellbeing, turnover, workloads, quality of induction and external factors influencing pressures, such as demand.
Though Ofsted's report last year highlighted the pressures on Cafcass's workforce, it also praised improvements in practice in relation to domestic abuse, which has historically been a problem area for the family courts body.
For example, the inspectorate said children's voices "[shone] through and [informed]" social workers' assessments for section 7 reports, which provide advice to the court on a child’s best interests when there are welfare concerns.
Improvements such as these were underpinned by senior leaders modelling an "unstinting commitment to improving the experiences of children", comprehensive training opportunities, reflective supervision and extensive quality assurance activities.
Practice improvements identified by Cafcass audits
Cafcass's annual report also highlighted year on year improvements in practice, based on its internal quality assurance system.
The proportion of practice assessed through audits as good or better increased from 69.8% to 73.1% from 2023-24 to 2024-25, it reported. This was a similar percentage to that recorded in 2022-23.
In relation to private law cases where domestic abuse was a factor, 68.9% of audited practice was graded as good or better, up from 65% in 2023-24, though below the 70.8% recorded in 2022-23.
Cafcass said it was developing a "strengthened improvement programme", in which practitioners and managers whose work has been graded as good or outstanding will coach and help develop those whose practice was not at this standard.
Target to deliver 'exceptional experience' to all children
In a foreword to the report, chief executive Jacky Tiotto and chair Sally Cheshire said the audit results showed that the organisation was maintaining, in many areas of the country, the standard of practice that saw it rated outstanding by Ofsted in 2024.
However, they said their ambition was to do "more for the children who are not offered an exceptional experience yet, more for the children in the regions and teams where outstanding work isn’t sustained all of the time".
"We need to find more time and capacity to support the people and the teams doing less well. We need to reduce the pressure on our frontline practitioners and managers whose caseloads and work life balance are affected by vacancies and sickness absence and we need to remain relentless on reducing delay for children in proceedings."
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