Equality, diversity and inclusion

These webpages contain information about our work to promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) within everything we do and in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. 

This information is important to children and families, because it explains our commitment to ensuring equality of access to our services, irrespective of their race, their gender or any of their other characteristics. ED&I is vital to ensure that we provide a service which responds to the needs of all the unique children, young people and families with whom we work. 

This information is important to us because it outlines our aims and objectives in relation to ED&I and sets out how we plan to achieve them. It is also important because it covers our equally strong commitment to providing an inclusive environment for everyone who works at Cafcass. 

On this page, you can read about our commitment to ED&I, our ED&I objectives and priorities, and our current ED&I strategy. Also in this section of our website, you can find out more about our staff diversity networks and our gender pay reporting. 

We are working with some of the most vulnerable children and families, during periods of great difficulty and upheaval in their lives. Every child is unique and every child matters. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion work focuses on developing a good understanding of the children and families with whom we work, our role as an inclusive employer, and our work to encourage and support staff diversity throughout our organisation. 

In addition, offering a supportive and inclusive working environment for our staff, drawing on a broad range of talent and striving to represent the diversity of the children and young people we are working with, is likely to lead to a more confident workforce and better-informed decision making.

Cafcass is committed to providing an inclusive working environment in which all transgender, non-binary and intersex people feel valued, included and respected. Read our full statement on our commitment to transgender (trans) and non-binary inclusion.

Leading Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: Our Commitment & Priorities for 2025-26 

Since July 2022 we have been leading and working to four equality, diversity and inclusion objectives, aligned to our previous Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022-25. 

These four objectives remain important as we strive to provide exceptional experiences, everywhere and every time for children and families. They include how we harness data and insight to drive meaningful change, the importance of authentic leadership and commitment, leading an inclusive culture to enable improved outcomes for children and families, and how we support our colleagues to work with confidence and sensitivity.

Better data and insight, used well

We will increase the proportion of children, families and employees for whom we capture information about their protected characteristics and publish analyses of that information to show whether there are disparities in their experience of us as a service provider or employer, and the action we have taken as a result.

During 2025-26 we will specifically:

• Better understand the experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women in family proceedings who are impacted by domestic abuse
• Work with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) to agree a timescale for the inclusion on the C100 (the court application form) of information in respect of the heritage and faith of applicants in private law proceedings

Leadership and commitment

We expect all leaders and managers to be inclusive in their behaviours and styles of leadership. This means respecting the uniqueness of colleagues, ruling out discrimination based on protected characteristics and enabling everyone to feel that their input and work is valued. It also means seeking out a range of perspectives on the many issues we face at Cafcass, being ambassadors of diversity and inclusion 

During 2025-26 we will specifically:

• Develop and enable ‘Inclusive’ leaders
• Consider how important language is and that it matters to the children and families we support, and our colleagues who work with us

People, culture, environment

We will improve the recruitment, retention, progression, development and experience of the people who work for us to achieve greater diversity within the organisation.

During 2025-26 we will specifically:

• Support and enable colleagues who are carers
• Strengthen the mental health support available for all colleagues
• Enable candidate uniqueness in our recruitment processes 

Skilled and confident practitioners and wider workforce

We will make talking to children and families about ethnicity, culture and heritage, a core competency for all colleagues – reflected in job descriptions, induction, training, reflective supervision, practice observation, performance learning, and development reviews and quality assurance. We will also encourage colleagues in the organisation to talk to each other about ethnicity, culture and heritage, to find out about our differences and our uniqueness. Managers will become more competent and confident in talking about these issues in supervision and performance learning reviews.

During 2025-26 we will specifically:

• Better understand the impact of heritage and culture on our assessments of harm and risk to children from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds
• Understand anti-racist practice in family justice 

For more information about working for Cafcass and our commitment to an inclusive workforce, please visit the Working for Us section of our website. This contains information about our:

• status as a Disability Confident Leader;
• membership of the Employers’ Initiative in Domestic Abuse (EIDA) scheme; and
• signature to the Mindful Employer Charter.

We also have a number of staff diversity networks. 

The purpose of these networks is to encourage staff to share and communicate experiences with one another as well as help shape and inform what we do and how we support our staff. They also contribute to the development of our practice working with children and families, so we are attentive to their unique and diverse backgrounds and experiences. The six networks are as follows:

• Ability Matters (Disability)
• Carers
• Faith
• Kaleidoscope (for Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff)
• Mental Health
• Neurodiversity
• Pride (LGBT+)