A group of 18 legal, medical and child care organisations has called for urgent action to reform the delivery of court services to children in family proceedings.

The Interdisciplinary Alliance for Children issued a joint position statement last week, voicing ‘grave concerns’ about the services currently provided by the Children and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass).

The group questioned whether the Cafcass model provides the most effective and cost-efficient service, and urged the government to make changes without waiting for the outcome of its family justice review.

The statement follows the report on Cafcass published by the National Audit Office last week. The report criticised Cafcass’s failure to respond more quickly and cost-effectively to the increase in demand for its services following the death of Baby P in 2007.

A Cafcass spokeswoman said it had improved its capacity to manage its increased workload, reduced the backlog of unallocated cases, and helped more children in the last year than ever before.

Family lawyers’ group Resolution suggested to the government’s family justice review panel last week that the burden on Cafcass could be reduced if courts directed parents to obtain private social work reports where they could afford to, instead of having them prepared at public expense.