Family courts have faced major scrutiny due to decisions such as the court order which placed Sara Sharif in the care of a father known to have been violent to multiple women and children in his past history.  Obviously this had tragic results. Social workers were aware of this history and yet recommended Sara should live with him. The Ministry of Justice’s “Harm Report” in 2020 identified “selective listening” in the family court system, particularly in relation to Cafcass’ tendency to minimise or ignore domestic abuse. Cafcass social workers have taken years to address these failings.  

At the same time, separately from these custody cases, children’s social services have also faced scrutiny in relation to tragic cases like that of Preston Davey, and anecdotally many parents report having evidence that social workers have acted inappropriately and either ignored evidence or fabricated evidence.

It appears that these issues are now complicated by the advent of AI models which social workers use.  These models are used despite the fact that social workers are aware of potential issues of veracity.  

On 13th September 2026, The Transparency Project (transparencyproject.org.uk) summarised reports that AI is currently used by social workers to audio-record, summarise and transcribe meetings (‘The use of AI by social workers may lead to injustice in family court proceedings’).

AI currently is used by social workers to summarise even meetings with families (and the parents’ consent is implied rather than explicitly gained in many cases, according to conferences uploaded to YouTube by the British Association of Social Workers).  However, where parts of a recording seem inaudible the AI can “transcribe” by adding what it considers most likely to have been said.  The Transparency Project reports on the potential injustice which can occur here, particularly in light of the fact that the audio is deleted after 30 days currently.  

Minor tweaks to this system have been suggested by various organisations but we would suggest that government needs to go further. As well as ensuring that recordings are not deleted after 30 days, we believe that government should legislate to ensure that social workers must inform parents of various rights which parents have and also ensure that parents are kept aware of the legal status of any involvement they have with either Cafcass or children’s social services.  Above all, parents should be explicitly informed that it is not unlawful to record professionals, particularly in the parent’s own home but often it is legal to record at any professional meeting and parents should be made aware that the family courts have issued guidance on the legalities of parents audio recording social workers - ie the emphasis on it being legal and not being a negative thing unless children are recorded in some situations. 

It is difficult to understand why parents are not already made aware of this, considering the high prevalence of claims of being misquoted in social work reports (and the extremely serious outcome of a child going into care in some instances).  

Academics like Professor Andy Bilson and Professor Luke Clements have researched and reported on issues faced by parents of children with special educational needs who can face various unfounded allegations which originate from NHS or teaching professionals (such as allegations of FII or of parenting issues) as soon as parents request more help or support from statutory services.  Very recently in the news there have been reports about individual parents in these kinds of cases and the fact that social work (“child protection”) investigations could be very lengthy and invasive despite ultimately coming to nothing.   These reports highlight the very stressful and upsetting nature of these cases for children and parents. 

Currently, parents can often feel that they have to cooperate and meet with social workers even though that is not legally always the case.  Whereas it may be helpful to parents to cooperate in many situations, people often report feeling confused and anxious as to the nature of safeguarding investigations. 

At present, parents often feel obliged to interact with social workers in relation to unfounded allegations, eg made by an ex-partner as a means of continuing post-separation abuse.  Parents are never informed that they have no legal obligation to communicate with Cafcass about custody (private law) cases unless this is very specifically detailed in a court order, and are not informed of this even when they have made a complaint about seemingly deliberate falsehoods added by Cafcass social workers in their reports for family courts. People have to rely on informal advice from peers if they cannot afford legal advice and this is completely unnecessary in light of the fact that (for example) Cafcass’ website could make it clear that most people have no legal duty to engage with Cafcass.  This may assist some parents who have witnessed profound bias in comments from Cafcass workers (such as comments implying that the social worker does not believe a victim/survivor who alleges abuse).  

Individual social workers (as well as The British Association of Social Workers and also Cafcass) need to offer the public more information about the legal rights and obligations which parents have throughout any period of involvement with any children’s social workers, including the exact nature of safeguarding concerns (something a parent is often kept in the dark about), as well as the above mentioned rights to information and the right of parents to audio record meetings with professionals.  

We believe these measures would make these investigations less stressful for families and would make the outcome considerably more fair. Such changes would be likely to generate public discussion and public awareness, so that parents subject to safeguarding queries in future might be less likely to feel that they are in the dark in terms of what their legal obligations are.