What to expect from your communication with Cafcass Cymru

Our usual working hours are Monday to Thursday 9am to 5pm, Friday 9am to 4.30pm.

We are not an emergency service so generally will not respond outside of these hours.

Area offices

Gwent

(Newport)

Area telephone number: 03000 252 800

Email address: cafcasscymrugwent@gov.wales

Mid and west Wales

(Aberystwyth / Carmarthen / Newtown /Llandrindod Wells)

Area telephone number: 03000 255 016

Email address: cafcasscymrumid&west@gov.wales

South Wales

(Cardiff / Merthyr Tydfil)

Area telephone number: 03000 628 877

Email address: cafcasscymrusouthwales@gov.wales

South west Wales

(Swansea)

Area telephone number: 03000 255 600

Email address: cafcasscymrusouthwest@gov.wales

North Wales

(Wrexham / Llandudno Junction / Caernarfon)

Area telephone number: 03000 625 821

Email address: cafcasscymrunorthwales@gov.wales

We are proud to have a diverse workforce. You can expect to be treated with courtesy and without discrimination in all your communications with us. Likewise, there is an expectation that we will be treated in a similar manner. We do not expect to be spoken to rudely,  or aggressively, or in a way which is discriminatory, and we do not expect to be sent e-mails or messages that are abusive, rude, or aggressive. Should this happen, the response will be as follows.

• You will be advised that if you continue in a tone that is offensive, unnecessary, or unhelpful, the call will end.
• The threat or use of physical violence, verbal abuse or harassment towards staff will result in the end of the telephone call.

If you need to phone the practitioner involved with you and your family, you should contact the area office phone number (listed above) for the area in which your case is allocated.

Our practitioners work with a number of families at any one time, and they cannot always respond to you immediately,  we log your phone call and efforts will be made to avoid  unnecessary delay in getting back to you.

Calls during office hours will be answered by a member of business support staff. If the practitioner you wish to speak to is not available to take the call, the business support staff will take a note of your details and pass a summary of the message to the practitioner.  

Practitioners will aim to return your call as soon as they are able. Business support staff will not be able to say exactly when a call will be returned but they will let you know if the practitioner is likely to be unavailable for more than three working days, for example if they know the practitioner is on leave.

The mobile phone numbers of practitioners will not normally be shared, and business support staff are not permitted to give out practitioners’ mobile phone numbers. If a practitioner has to call you using a mobile telephone, this will normally be from a withheld number.

Our practitioners generally work normal office hours (Monday to Thursday 9am-5pm, Friday 9am-4.30pm), and they will not usually be able to respond to calls outside of these times.

 You may receive text messages from us, this is usually to arrange an appointment. Please be aware the centralised electronic system we use for sending text messages does not allow for you to reply, so if you have difficulty with the appointment offered, please advise us of this by phoning the area office in which your case is allocated.

Should you wish to e-mail us about your case, please use the e-mail address for the area office in which your case is allocated, as shown in the list at the beginning of this document.

During our involvement with your family, a member of our business support team will contact you by phone to implement e-mail verification, which is a process that enables us to share confidential information with you by e-mail.

During the e-mail verification call, we will first ask you some security questions to confirm your identity, ensuring we keep your information secure.  We will then ask you to confirm your preferred e-mail address for us to use when contacting you. Once you have confirmed this, we will send an e-mail to your preferred e-mail address asking for you to send us a code. We will send the code to you via text message,  you will  need to send this code to us by e-mail from the preferred e-mail address you have logged with us. Once we have received and confirmed this, our business support teams will then be able to share letters, reports, and other correspondence with you via  your preferred e-mail address.

If you have any difficulties with reading or writing, or with accessing confidential e-mails, please make us aware of this, so we can consider how best to communicate with you.

Should we need to send you any confidential information by post, or if you would prefer us to send you information by post, this will be done using Track and Trace postal services and you will need to sign for the item.

Please ensure you keep us informed of any change of address or phone number.

If you receive a copy of a report that we have written for the court and you disagree with its content and recommendations, you should discuss this with your solicitor if you have one - or tell the court when you attend. If you believe specific details in the report are incorrect (e.g. spellings of names or dates of birth etc – what we call factual inaccuracies), then please advise us of this, so that if the author of the report needs  to change something, this can be addressed as quickly as possible.

You should not attend any of our offices  without an appointment as the practitioner is unlikely to be available, and this may cause you frustration.

If you wish to meet with your practitioner, this must be by appointment only. To request an appointment or phone call to discuss matters with the practitioner, please contact the relevant  office that your family are involved with.

Our expectations in respect of courtesy and respectful behaviour also apply to all office visits and appointments. Appointments will be ended if these expectations are not adhered to.

If we are involved with you because of private law matters, (known as Pathfinder Pilot in North Wales), our involvement will end once we have completed the work the court has asked us to do this may mean we have completed what is necessary by the first hearing in court.

The court may ask us to work with you and your family for longer and provide a more detailed report for court, but this could still mean that our role would end before your court case finishes, which means that the practitioner will not be able to discuss any further information with you unless requested to do so by the court.  Our involvement in a public law matter will be closed when the Final Hearing ends.

Should you have concerns about a child’s safety once our work is completed, you should notify the Local Authority social services department in the area where the child lives and/or the police if the child is subject to immediate harm.

Should you wish to contact us after our involvement has ended to pay a compliment about the service you received or to make a complaint, you should contact either the area team which has been involved with you, or you can use the Cafcass Cymru feedback hub.