EVIDENCE, NOT PRESUMPTION: CAFCASS’S NEW PLAN MUST PROTECT CHILDREN, GENUINE SURVIVORS AND PUBLIC MONEY
CAFCASS has published its strategy for 2026 – 2029. It is not a new Act of Parliament and it does not rewrite the Family Procedure Rules.
But its commitment to hearing children earlier, strengthening safeguarding, reducing delay and improving consistency could mark an important change in private children proceedings.
It is a welcome move forward, but only if one principle runs through every case:
Evidence must come before presumption.
The Family Court cannot safely operate on automatic belief, automatic disbelief, gender stereotypes or the assumption that the parent making the greatest number of allegations must be right.
Nor can it dismiss genuine abuse simply because it took place behind closed doors and left no convenient paper trail.
The answer is not to choose a side before examining the facts. The answer is early, skilled and impartial assessment focused relentlessly on the child.
Children are paying the price for an overloaded system and the latest Ministry of Justice figures show the scale of the pressure. Between January and March 2026:-
● 15,534 private-law children cases were started, 16% more than in the same quarter of 2025
● 22,928 children were involved in new private-law applications
● 40,971 private-law cases remained open at the end of March 2026 — 11% more than a year earlier
● The average private-law case took 35 weeks to conclude; and
● 1,692 cases had already been open for 100 weeks or longer
One hundred weeks is almost two years of a child’s life.
Children do not get that time back. They live through the uncertainty, disrupted relationships, parental conflict, repeated questioning and anxiety while adults and agencies wait for the next hearing.
Repeated hearings, duplicated reports, late disclosure and unfocused allegations do not merely waste court time. They consume public money and can prolong the very harm the system is supposed to prevent.
The law already puts welfare and safety first
Under section 1 of the Children Act 1989, a child’s welfare is the court’s paramount consideration when it determines questions about that child’s upbringing.
The welfare checklist requires the court to consider the child’s wishes and feelings, needs, the likely effect of change, and any harm suffered or risk of harm.
Practice Direction 12J requires the court to identify domestic-abuse issues at the earliest opportunity, consider the nature of the allegations and the available evidence, and decide whether disputed facts require a fact-finding hearing.
Where domestic abuse is admitted or proved, any child-arrangements order must protect the child and the parent with whom the child lives from further harm.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 makes clear that abuse is not confined to physical violence. It includes controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse and psychological or emotional abuse.
Section 3 recognises children as victims in their own right when they see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse and are related to the victim or perpetrator.
The legal framework is clear. Domestic abuse must be taken seriously. Children must be protected. Material disputed allegations must be examined fairly.
Too often, the failure is in implementation.
An allegation is not a finding, but an unproved allegation is not necessarily a lie
This distinction is essential.
An allegation is not automatically a proven fact. But an allegation that is not ultimately proved is not automatically false.
Domestic abuse often occurs in private. A survivor may have no independent witness, may delay reporting through fear, or may give an incomplete account because of trauma.
A court may be unable to make a finding on the balance of probabilities. That does not, by itself, establish deliberate dishonesty.
There are at least four distinct situations:-
1. Abuse that is admitted or proved
2. A concern raised honestly but not capable of being proved on the available evidence
3. Conflicting accounts requiring further investigation or judicial determination
4. An allegation shown by evidence to have been knowingly fabricated or deliberately misleading
Only the fourth should properly be described as a false allegation.
There is no reliable official national statistic establishing what proportion of allegations in private children proceedings are deliberately fabricated. Politicians, campaigners and professionals should stop presenting unsupported percentages as fact.
What is required is a process capable of distinguishing genuine risk from unresolved evidence, harmful adult conflict and deliberate misuse.
Genuine survivors must not be failed
Domestic abuse is not a side issue in Family Court proceedings. It can determine whether any form of contact is emotionally and physically safe.
In January to March 2026 alone, 9,322 domestic-violence remedy orders were applied for and 9,867 orders were made. These totals include interim and final orders and are not a count of individual victims, but they demonstrate the substantial demand placed on the Family Court’s protective jurisdiction.
Genuine survivors need early safeguarding, access to representation and professionals who understand coercive control, economic abuse, post-separation abuse and the use of litigation as a continuation of control.
Survivors should not be forced to repeat traumatic evidence unnecessarily. They should not wait months while essential police, health, school or local-authority records remain outstanding.
And they must not be silenced by careless claims that allegations are routinely invented.
Evidence-led justice does not mean creating an impossible evidential barrier before interim protection can be considered. Evidence can include a parent’s account, messages, medical information, school records, police material, witness evidence, patterns of behaviour and changes in a child’s presentation.
Evidence must be assessed as a whole and in context.
Protect legal aid and stop avoidable proceedings draining it
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 removed most private family matters from the ordinary scope of legal aid.
Legal aid remains available in qualifying private-law cases involving evidence of domestic abuse or child abuse, subject to the merits and financial eligibility rules.
Ministry of Justice figures for January to March 2026 show that applications for civil representation supported by evidence of domestic violence or child abuse rose by 6% compared with the same quarter of 2025, while certificates granted through that gateway rose by 9%. The provisional grant rate was 86%.
The figures do not establish that deliberately false claims consume any particular proportion of legal-aid funding. That claim must not be made without evidence.
However deliberate dishonesty, unnecessary litigation, duplicated work and avoidable hearings plainly consume finite public resources.
Genuine survivors already struggle to find legal-aid providers and obtain timely representation. Every pound lost to procedural drift is a pound that cannot protect a person who genuinely needs help.
Protecting legal aid does not mean putting another obstacle in front of victims. It means identifying genuine need early, obtaining the relevant evidence quickly, funding effective representation and dealing firmly with misuse when it is actually proved.
Stop funding procedural drift Every contested private children case should begin with focused, evidence-led triage that asks:-
● What has this child experienced?
● What safeguarding concerns have been raised?
● What evidence is already available?
● What information is required from police, schools, health services or the local authority?
● Is an urgent protective arrangement needed?
● Are disputed facts relevant to welfare and, if so, is fact-finding necessary and proportionate?
● Is litigation itself being used to continue abuse or control?
● What is the shortest safe route to a final decision?
The court should not permit hundreds of pages of hostile adult exchanges to bury the issues affecting the child.
Parents should be expected to set out, as clearly as they can:-
1. What happened?
2. When did it happen?
3. What evidence supports the account?
4. How has it affected the child?
5. Is the risk continuing?
6. What practical, child-centred outcome is proposed?
A focused chronology, clearly identified allegations and responses, properly organised evidence and a workable proposal are far more useful than pages of accusation and counter-accusation.
Where domestic abuse may be relevant, it must be assessed properly.
Where a disputed allegation is material to welfare, the court must decide whether it needs to be determined.
Where knowing fabrication is proved, its impact on the child and proceedings must be addressed.
Where repeated litigation is being used to continue abuse, the court must properly consider protective case-management measures, including a section 91(14) order where the legal test is met.
CAFCASS, the Ministry of Justice and the Family Court should now commit to the following ten reforms:-
1. Early evidence-led triage in every contested private children case
2. Rapid multi-agency information-sharing, with firm deadlines for essential disclosure
3. Specialist domestic-abuse training, including coercive control, economic abuse and post-separation abuse
4. A clear distinction between unproved and deliberately false allegations
5. Focused fact-finding only where disputed facts are relevant and necessary to determine welfare or risk
6. Protection against litigation abuse, including proper consideration of section 91(14) orders
7. Accessible legal aid for genuine survivors, supported by enough providers and prompt decision-making
8. Transparent CAFCASS recommendations that show the connection between the evidence, identified risk and proposed outcome
9. Measurement of child outcomes, not merely faster case closure
10. National consistency, so a child’s protection does not depend on their postcode
Speed without accuracy is not justice.
CAFCASS’s success cannot be measured simply by how quickly a file is closed.
A fast but unsafe decision is not progress. Evidence considered without an informed understanding of domestic abuse is not enough.
Delay disguised as thoroughness is not justice either. The system needs efficiency, evidence, resources and informed professional judgment.
The Family Court should not ask which parent has won the adult argument. It should ask:-
What has this child experienced?
What does the evidence show?
What remains genuinely disputed?
Is there a risk of harm?
What arrangement is truly in this child’s best interests?
CAFCASS’s plan will be a genuine step forward only if it produces earlier assessment, properly tested evidence, fewer wasted hearings and stronger protection for genuine victims.
Evidence protects survivors.
Evidence protects wrongly accused parents.
Evidence protects legal aid and public money.
Most importantly, evidence protects children.
The Government must now give CAFCASS and the courts the resources, training and accountability needed to turn those words into action.
Children should not lose years of their childhood to adult conflict, procedural delay or decisions founded on presumption. They deserve truth, safety and decisive action and they deserve it now.
Legal and statistical references: Children Act 1989, section 1 and section 91A/section 91(14) framework; Family Procedure Rules 2010, Practice Direction 12J; Domestic Abuse Act 2021, sections 1 and 3; Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly and Legal Aid Statistics Quarterly, January–March 2026.
Deanna Newell | Founder - DN Family Law | Campaign Lead - Reform That Works
Advocacy for truth-tellers, survivors, and the children who deserve better
