Conclusion 11

Successful delivery of services requires strong accountability with clear roles and responsibilities. Responsibilities for family justice are dispersed across many organisations across government and there is no single body accountable for overall performance. Complex and fragmented funding arrangements and information flows for family justice make accountability more challenging.18 Witnesses agreed that it is more challenging than if there were one simple system with a single accounting officer, but told us that nearly all the most complex problems in society involve multiple government departments, and that there was no way to make this system into one person’s responsibility. That the system is complex was the nature of the challenge, but MoJ described it and the other departments as working very hard together, with clear collective aims.19