The Secretary of State has reappointed Helen Jones and Professor Eileen Munro for 4 years from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2028 and Rohan Sivanandan from 1 April 2024 to 23 December 2024, as members of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) Board.
Helen Jones
Helen Jones is an experienced risk, compliance and regulatory policy practitioner. She has both public and commercial cross-sectoral experience in financial services and non-executive experience in social housing, services for children and young people and occupational pensions. Helen worked in various senior risk roles for the Bank of England and for the Financial Services Authority, before working for Lloyds Banking Group. Helen was a board member of the then YMCA London South West (now St Paul's Group) for over 20 years, latterly as Chair of the Board. She chaired the Board of the YMCA pension scheme for 12 years and is a current member of its Investment Committee.
She is a Magistrate and member and Deputy Chair of the Greater London Family Panel. Helen is also Deputy Chair of the Family Court Committee of the Magistrates Association. She was a member of the Private Law Working Group, established by the President of the Family Division, and is a current ex officio member of the FJC sub-group on alienating behaviours. Helen is also a non-executive director of a family mediation charity.
She has chaired the Audit and Risk Committee of Cafcass for the last 4 years.
Professor Eileen Munro
Eileen Munro is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. She has written extensively on how to improve reasoning in child protection work, covering how best to combine intuitive and analytic reasoning and also on the importance of understanding how the organisational system influences workers' actions. In 2011 she completed the Munro Review of the English Child Protection System.
Eileen was able to test the feasibility of implementing her Review recommendations by working with the Signs of Safety organisation on whole system re-design to support Signs of Safety practice with families. She has continued to work on philosophical issues relating to studying social processes, taking a critical view of much of the dominant version of evidence-based practice. She is currently co-researcher on the project: 'Providing credible evidence for singular causal claims'.
Rohan Sivanandan
Rohan Sivanandan worked as an economist and senior executive in the private sector before moving into the education field. He worked across all phases of education, latterly as an education chief officer, before going on to set up his own consultancy specialising in organisational transformation and leadership coaching. He has held a number of board, non-executive and trustee positions and has a particular interest in addressing social inequalities and injustice. Currently, Rohan is a non-executive director for Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust where he chairs the Workforce and Education committee; a lay member of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel which provides advice to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care; an independent member of the Greater London Authority on Mayoral appointments; an investigation panel member for the Nursing and Midwifery Council; a panel chair of NHS Mental Health Act hearings. Rohan chairs the People Committee for the Cafcass Board. All three have not declared any political activity.
Cafcass is the statutory body that safeguards and promotes the welfare of children in Family Court proceedings.
Reappointments to Cafcass are made by the Secretary of State for Justice.
