More than 100 hoax bomb warnings were sent to Cafcass offices in one year. The scale of the campaign against the troubled children’s court service was revealed recently in a dossier prepared by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo). Surely such sustained intimidation must take a toll on its staff? Anthony Douglas, Cafcass chief executive, insists that it has not affected their work. He has been in the job since September and since then has visited 112 of Cafcass’s 140 offices and met about 1,400 staff. He has been impressed by the “total commitment and love of their work”.

But he says: “Many staff, particularly in the private law work, feel a cumulative bombardment and attrition from angry parents and, in particular, from the pressure groups.”

It is hardly surprising. Over the past few months the campaign against Cafcass has increased. A package containing fish heads, rotting meat and maggots was delivered to the Portsmouth office in September. It was reported in the local press that one protester had said: “We have names and addresses” of Cafcass officers. In October, the following message was left on the answerphone at the Kingston office: “Your days of abusing children and families are numbered — the day of reckoning is at hand.”

It is a surprise then that Cafcass has now decided to speak to some of the militant protesters. Douglas admits that some of his colleagues view this as a form of appeasement. But he believes that he owes a duty of care to his workers and wants to prevent an increase in harassment.

"The fathers’ groups raise, quite rightly, the situation of non-resident fathers who disappear from kids’ lives and we know that’s not in kids’ interests,” he says. “But I don’t think we are part of the problem. I genuinely believe our practitioners are trying to facilitate contact for both mothers and fathers in situations of implacable hostility.”

Each year Cafcass deals with about 30,000 cases where separating parents cannot agree on what is best for their children. As for there being an anti-father bias, Douglas has reviewed 600 cases personally and denies it. “Where decisions go against fathers I have seen the reasons for it — usually to do with family violence and the pure fear that mothers have about particular fathers.”

The Napo report shows that only a tiny fraction of fathers involved in family court proceedings, 0.8 per cent, were given no contact. Whereas 42 per cent of fathers no longer had contact with their children at the start of proceedings, by the end of proceedings the proportion had dropped to 6 per cent.

Matt O’Connor, the founder of Fathers4Justice, is not impressed by the statistics. “They assume that the contact orders are actually worth the paper they’re written on,” he says. “A lot of these guys only get to send a birthday card or Christmas card once a year and that’s not contact. That’s not a relationship with your child.

“Fathers4Justice deny responsibility for intimidating Cafcass staff. A trademark of our campaign is humour, hopefully.” But he adds:. “All you need is one angry father to go off at a tangent but all I can do is make sure our house is in order.”

He argues that the culture that prevails in Cafcass is “fundamentally discriminatory against fathers”. “What we need is a proper support service where there is mandatory mediation and early intervention from properly trained professionals and not from people who are still displaying the old myths and stereotypes about fathers.”

For many family law practitioners, Cafcass is an organisation that has yet to find its feet and, in particular, recover from the damning select committee inquiry just over a year ago that led to the sacking of its board. “It still needs time to get over the really bad start,” says Yvonne Brown, a national committee member of Resolution (formerly the Solicitors Family Law Association). “The problems have now been ongoing for several years and they are about insufficient numbers of quality staff and delays in allocation of case reports.”

Against this troubled background, the Green Paper Parental Separation: Children’s Needs and Parental Responsibilities reveals ministerial plans for a new and improved service. It proposes that officers write fewer reports and adopt a more “active problem-solving” role such as in-court conciliation. Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor,has made clear that there will be no more money available for Cafcass.

Cafcass is comfortable with the Green Paper’s shift in focus. But it is going to be a struggle to turn around the fortunes of an underfunded organisation without extra resources. Douglas plans to cut bureaucracy to free money for more frontline staff and to work with the judiciary on eliminating unnecessary report writing.

Although critics would like to see Cafcass scrapped, Douglas is convinced of its vital role. One of the reasons for this is that he was adopted. “When you grow up with multiple relationships and more than one parent, life is complicated and not many people ask what you think and what you want,” he says. “We are there for the children who don’t have a voice. The more noise that comes from adult groups makes me more concerned that the voices of children aren’t drowned out.”