NAGALRO

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NAGALRO is an acronym for National Association of Guardians ad litem and Reporting Officers.

NAGALRO is a professional association for practitioners, mostly social workers, who work in the United Kingdom (UK) in the fields of child protection and child and family welfare within the family court system.

The association came into being in 1990 but practitioners had been working as Guardians ad litem to children coming before the courts in England and Wales since 1984 when independent persons started to be appointed by the courts to act on behalf of children. Indeed, Guardians ad litem (Gals) had been used earlier in cases where there was an application to discharge a care order - i.e. send a child who had been looked after by the welfare authorities home to its family. This was because of an insertion into child protection legislation by David Owen MP (now the Rt Hon the Lord Owen), which was inspired by the case of Maria Colwell.

Maria Colwell was a child who had been cared for by foster parents under the protection of a Fit Person Order (a Care Order is the current equivalent). On 17th November 1971 the magistrates at Hove decided to revoke that fit person order and let Maria go home to her mother and stepfather. In 1973 her stepfather, William Kepple, kicked Maria to death in a house in Brighton. Maria was then aged seven. William Kepple was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment, reduced to 4 on appeal. There was a public outcry and a Committee of Inquiry was set up to enquire into the Care and Supervision Provided in Relation to Maria Colwell. TG Field-Fisher TD, MA, QC Recorder of the Crown Court and Chairman of the Dogs Home Battersea chaired it.

The committee reported in 1974. One of the findings was that in the court proceedings while the local council and the parents were able to put their case and be legally represented there was nobody putting the point of view of the child. That was what the Guardians ad litem from 1985 onwards were asked to do. They were appointed directly by the court as named individuals charged with protecting the interests of a named child and doing so independently but jointly with a solicitor lawyer whom they would select. This joint guardian and lawyer teamwork arrangement for the protection of each child coming before the courts has since become known as the “tandem model”. This model is widely admired internationally as a way of giving real priority to the child’s interests in child protection, adoption and similar legal proceedings.

The Maria Colwell case has an earlier echo, an almost mirror image case, of child abuse and death. That is the case of Dennis O’Neill whose death gave rise to the Curtis Report and the beginning of state child care and protection services in the UK. As Dennis O’Neill’s brother Tom wrote, many years later: “On 9 January 1945 my brother, Dennis O'Neill was beaten to death by his foster-father in a lonely farmhouse in Shropshire. Twenty-eight years later, on 6 January 1973, Maria Colwell was beaten to death by her step-father in a council house in Brighton, Both deaths resulted in a public outcry about the standards of official supervision of the children”.

It was in these sensitive decisions about when, whether and how the state should interfere in family life to protect children that Guardians ad litem are asked to advise the courts. When should the state intervene in a family and when leave well alone? Lean one way and be accused of failure to protect; the other and it is unjustified interference in family life. By 1985 Guardians ad litem were being appointed both in cases where it was proposed that children be placed in state care as well as in cases where it was proposed that state care should cease and also in other types of cases where the child’s welfare was a central issue.

The Children Act 1989 was implemented in October 1991. This Act, with its introduction of the "paramount principle" (the child’s welfare interests to be treated as paramount), could not have been put into place nor made workable had it not been for the efforts of the Guardians ad litem during the preceding six or seven years. A body of people, mostly experienced local council social workers, had seized upon the new legislation to carve new careers for themselves as (usually) self-employed individual professionals who, through panels of Guardians ad litem (and Reporting Officers in adoption cases) offered their services to the courts to carry out the task, with the child’s solicitor, of independently representing children.

The Children Act changes developed what became known as “public law” (i.e. parents verses the state) and “private law” (i.e. divorcing parents against each other) within the same piece of legislation. A perceived difficulty about the Guardian ad litem (public law) arrangements in this new era was that it was organised (at arms length) by the same local authorities that were going to the courts to seek the initiation or discharge of public law orders about children. The Probation Service managed the private law welfare reporting service – equally inappropriately. To avoid these potential conflicts of interest the answer was seen as in setting up a national organisation dealing with providing the courts with expert and independent practitioners who could advise the courts about the welfare of children in both public and private law proceedings. Thus, on 1st April 2001, was born CAFCASS - a non-departmental government body.

The first management team and board of directors of CAFCASS decided that the by now well-established and very well regarded self-employed Guardians ad litem should be removed. Those experienced fully independent professionals who had hugely improved the decision making in child protection processes suddenly found themselves facing an ultimatum - either take up a job within CAFCASS at a junior, lowly paid and closely supervised level have no role at all in child protection. It was also decided that CAFCASS, not the courts, would manage the process of the allocation of cases to guardians. This resulted in waiting lists for Guardians where there had been no waiting lists before. Result, angry work force and courts dissatisfied with delays.

Through NAGALRO the guardians gathered funds amongst themselves, took legal advice and went to the High Court mounting judicial review proceedings questioning the legality of the CAFCASS decision to try to get rid of them. In September 2003 they succeeded when the High Court decided that the CAFCASS plan to arbitrarily dispose of the self-employed Guardians was not legal.

That first CAFCASS management team variously resigned or were sacked. A caretaker Chief Executive and was appointed. The Board were sacked and replaced. Departmental responsibility was moved from the Lord Chancellor’s Department (now Department of Constitutional Affairs) to the Department for Education and Skills and a new Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Douglas, was appointed. The part of CAFCASS serving Wales separated off and since 2005 is responsible to the National Assembly for Wales.

CAFCASS in a few short years has attracted considerable controversy. Father’s groups in particular have criticised CAFCASS, mainly to do with its private law functions in divorce and related matters. It was members of a pressure group Father’s 4 Justice which dusted Tony Blair with purple powder in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party in opposition has stated that it will abolish CAFCASS if it forms a future government.

NAGALRO had hoped that after their High Court triumph and the appointment of the new CEO and Board that CAFCASS would want to work positively with the self employed Guardians, recognise them as the able, responsible and knowledgeable professionals they are and use those qualities within the fledgling and much criticised organisation which is CAFCASS. Sadly, CAFCASS decided on the classic bureaucratic structure of an over managed, one-size-fits-all, resource and targets driven organisation which has little if any place for independent minded practitioners.

In the face of a standstill budget for 2005/6 CAFCASS has decided to preserve and even increase the bureaucracy and reduce direct services particularly in the public law (child protection) field. CAFCASS has recently proposed that the ratio of time spent on public law to change in favour of private law from the historic typical ratio of 6:1 to a ratio of 3:1. Meaning halving the time Guardians spend on child protection cases. The new aim of CAFCASS is to provide the “minimum necessary, maximum affordable service” while “ensuring every child referred receives a service within the resource level available”.

The title NAGALRO is now something of an anachronism. Guardians ad litem have become Children’s Guardians and with the implementation of the Adoption and Children Act 2001 Reporting Officers are on the way out too. However the acronym lingers on in the memories of the members as representing an association whose members made a real change in the world of child protection social work and had their day of triumph even if they are yet to, and indeed may never, taste the fruits of that triumph.