By Charlotte Webster-
Kathryn Gillatt(pictured) has been appointed to the board of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) for a four-year term, bringing more than three decades of experience in financial leadership, governance, risk management and public-sector oversight to an organisation operating at the centre of England and Wales’ increasingly pressured family justice system.
The appointment, approved by the Secretary of State for Justice and effective from 5 October 2026, comes at a significant moment for Cafcass and the wider family courts. Cafcass safeguards and promotes the welfare of children involved in family proceedings where their welfare is, or may be, in question. Its Family Court Advisers and guardians provide assessments and recommendations to courts in cases involving children, making the organisation a crucial link between families, professionals and judges
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Gillatt is a Chartered Accountant and experienced senior healthcare and civil-service leader. Her career has included senior finance and corporate-services positions at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, NHS organisations and Doncaster Children’s Trust, while since 2014 she has served as an Audit Committee Chair across NHS trusts and other public bodies. Cafcass describes her as bringing extensive experience in governance, risk, assurance, organisational improvement and managing demand-led public serv
That background gives the appointment a significance beyond the addition of another name to the Cafcass board. At a time when family justice is under scrutiny over delays, rising workloads, regional disparities and the handling of complaints and concerns, Gillatt’s governance and audit experience could provide an important layer of oversight over how effectively Cafcass identifies problems, manages risk, uses public money and turns criticism and complaints into measurable improvements. The scale of the pressure is evident in Cafcass’s own latest figures. Between April and August 2026, the organisation received 4,755 new children’s cases in August alone, involving 7,259 children. At the end of August, 29,213 children’s cases remained open, involving 46,452 children — an increase of 8.1 per cent in open cases compared with the same month a year earlier. Private-law cases accounted for 17,513 of those open cases
The wider family courts face a similarly difficult picture. Ministry of Justice statistics show that 71,259 new cases were started in the family courts between January and March 2026, three per cent more than in the same period the previous year. Although average disposal times for care proceedings have improved, cases still took an average of 37 weeks, while only 36 per cent were concluded within the statutory 26-week target.
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A particularly serious warning came from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, in their 45th report covering the period from 2024- 2025 that more than 4,000 children were involved in family cases that had remained open for more than 100 weeks in December 2024. The committee also found substantial regional disparities, with public-law cases taking an average of 53 weeks in London compared with 24 weeks in Wales at that point. It identified shortages of district judges and social workers as important factors behind delays in London and the South East.
Those findings underline one of the legitimate areas in which Gillatt’s experience could prove relevant is performance and accountability. Cafcass cannot, on its own, resolve every source of delay in the family courts, because responsibility is divided among judges, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, local authorities, social workers, lawyers and other agencies. But Cafcass can be expected to know whether its own systems are working, whether workloads are manageable, whether children are being seen and heard appropriately, and whether recurring failures identified through complaints and reviews are leading to changes in practice.
Cafcass itself acknowledges the importance of that challenge. Its 2026–2029 strategic plan identifies improved management oversight, greater consistency of practice, more manageable caseloads, reducing delay and learning from complaints, significant incidents and reviews as priorities. The plan also calls for children’s feedback to inform changes in practice and the wider family justice system.
Complaints are an especially important part of that accountability picture. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman recorded 303 complaints concerning Cafcass in 2024–25, with 86 decided following primary investigation. No complaints were recorded as upheld in the Ombudsman’s published data. That figure should not be interpreted as meaning that concerns do not exist: Cafcass itself actively invites complaints from children and families and says they are important for identifying what went wrong and improving future services.
The organisation’s own 2025–26 data also identifies areas where children’s experiences require continued attention. Cafcass says 20 children’s complaints were made during that year, with emerging themes including the need to improve how children are listened to, how their wishes and feelings are shared with the court, responsiveness to children and keeping them informed throughout proceedings. There is also a growing demand for greater openness about the family courts. Since January 2025, journalists and legal bloggers have been able, subject to transparency orders and safeguards, to report from family-court proceedings across England and Wales. The reforms followed concerns about transparency and the need for the public to understand how family justice operates while protecting the identities and privacy of children and families.
That increased scrutiny makes governance particularly important. A system entrusted with decisions affecting children and families must be able to demonstrate not only that its staff are working within professional standards, but also that mistakes are identified, complaints are examined, resources are properly managed and lessons are demonstrably implemented.
Gillatt’s appointment therefore comes at a point when Cafcass is being asked to help deliver major changes as well as manage existing pressures. The Government’s Child Focused Courts reforms are being rolled out nationally, with the stated aim of involving children earlier, reducing delay and strengthening safe decision-making, including in cases involving domestic abuse. The national implementation is expected to extend across England and Wales
The challenge will be to ensure that reform is not measured simply by new structures, policies or targets, but by what children and families actually experience. Cafcass says its strategic priorities include reducing case duration, improving practice, strengthening oversight and making children’s feedback part of performance management. Gillatt’s particular contribution, given her background, is likely to be strongest in scrutinising whether those ambitions are supported by effective governance, reliable information, robust risk controls and clear evidence of improvement.
The appointment will not necessarily provide a solution to every problem confronting the family courts. Many of the system’s most persistent difficulties sit outside Cafcass’s direct control, including judicial and social-worker capacity, court administration, local-authority performance and the complexity of individual cases. Parliament itself has described family justice as a complex system in which many organisations are involved and no single body has overall responsibility for performance.
But that is precisely why strong board-level scrutiny matters. For families who can spend months or years waiting for decisions affecting where children live, who they see and how they are protected, accountability cannot be confined to financial balance sheets. It must extend to timeliness, safeguarding, quality of assessments, communication with children, consistency between regions and the ability to learn when things go wrong.
Gillatt arrives with a professional record built around those traditional disciplines of public-sector accountability. Her four-year term now places her in a position where that experience can be applied to a much more human measure of performance: whether Cafcass is consistently delivering a service in which children are heard, risks are properly identified, concerns are acted upon and families are not left waiting unnecessarily for justice.
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