On 1st April the Government confirmed that the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Find would continue at £50m for 2025-36, the same funding as previously. This was broadly welcomed by the sector, with Adoption UK’s CEO Emily Frith saying:
“The Fund has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of children and it’s a huge relief to have this commitment for a further year of specialist support. Unfortunately, the delay has caused great distress for families and has risked further harm to children. There will now be a backlog of applications and further waits for people in desperate need of support. What has happened has been really unforgivable. The government must open applications immediately and then announce a permanent Fund so they avoid ever causing such distress again.”
Sadly however, the Government then made a further announcement on 14 April, with key changes being noted by Coram BAAF as follows:
“The Government have said that in order to maximise the number of children who are able to access the fund they are undertaking a number of changes to the fund. These include:
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- Setting the overall Fair Access Limit (FAL) to £3,000 (previously £5,000)
- No longer having a separate FAL for specialist assessments. Specialist assessments up to £2,500 will be considered for funding, but only within the overall FAL of £3,000. So, for example, you could only apply for £500 worth of therapy, if the child received a specialist assessment costing £2,500.
- No longer being able to offer match funding applications for therapy which costs more than the £3,000 FAL, or for specialist assessments which cost more than £2,500.
- Future funding will also be subject to Spending Review decisions. Therefore, for the time being, the fund will only be able to consider applications where the therapy or specialist assessment will be fully completed before the end of March 2026…”
This led a number of organisations including Kinship, Adoption UK and Coram to write to the Secretary of State urging re-consideration of changes, writing:
“Dear Secretary of State,
As organisations that work with adoptive and kinship families who are raising children facing some of the biggest barriers to opportunity in this country, we are deeply concerned and dismayed about the government’s recent announcement to reduce the support available to them through the adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF). The decision taken to cut the individual support available to each child by 40% will have a direct impact on the futures of thousands of children and young adults, has caused widespread distress and anger among affected families, and appears economically short-sighted.
Around 3,000 children in England are placed in adoptive families each year, and around 5,000 leave the care system each year when a special guardianship or child arrangements order is made. Adopted children and this group of kinship children are almost all care-experienced and share a childhood overshadowed by trauma, loss and disruption. The need for lifelong support is very common. These children have the same potential and deserve the same chance to thrive as every other child.
In your election manifesto, this government acknowledged that “every child should have a loving, secure home” and promised to “work with local Government to support children in care, including through kinship, foster care, and adoption…” Despite this, and despite committing to “…breaking the pernicious link between background and success”, the government’s approach to these children on this issue has so far been marked by delay and disappointment.
This incoherence is illustrated by the letter from your department to Adoption England just this month calling for sector action and improvements in adopter recruitment, matching and support. This ambition was undermined days later by these cuts to support, which will impact each step of the adopter journey. Further, despite welcome decisions to extend and rename the fund to include kinship families in recent years, the funding available per child is now being reduced because of increased demand. This was entirely foreseeable. This comes on top of a freeze on funds available per child for well over a decade and rising demand for support.
New provisions in the government’s own Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which seek to improve the signposting of therapeutic support to kinship families through a kinship local offer are now, in effect, being undermined. Meanwhile, the national adoption strategy which sets out the framework for improvements in the system, including adoption support, is overdue for review. The statutory guidance on adoption is 12 years old. Yet adoption was not even mentioned in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Reducing the level of funded therapeutic support through the ASGSF will not solve the financial challenges caused by the foreseeable increased demand. Instead, this short-sighted decision will simply act to increase the pressure on other already-overstretched services within the NHS and elsewhere. It risks significant consequences for individual children who need this vital support, especially children with the most complex needs who experience the greatest barriers to opportunity, and risks increasing the number of families reaching breaking point. This decision may lead to placement disruptions and a resultant impact on local authority children’s services if children return to the care system. It also risks undermining the government funded adopter recruitment campaign and efforts to increase the number of children looked after in kinship arrangements.
We urge you to reconsider this decision, made without consultation with sector organisations or adoptive and kinship families, including your department’s own national reference groups for adoptive parents and kinship carers.
We understand the challenges the government faces, and we work every day to address the challenges faced by adoptive and kinship families. As we head towards the Spending Review, we urge you as Secretary of State to take immediate action to convene organisations like ours to start to work through these challenges together and establish a long-term plan for the future of the ASGSF beyond this year.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Lucy Peake – Chief Executive, Kinship
Emily Frith – Chief Executive Officer, Adoption UK
Dr Carol Homden CBE – Chief Executive, Coram
Satwinder Sandhu – Chief Executive Officer, CVAA”
Responding to the changes, Kinship wrote:
“This announcement will come as a further blow to kinship carers who are already experiencing ongoing disruption to their children’s therapy following the government’s delayed commitment to renewing the ASGSF earlier this month. Kinship families are once again caught in the chaos and today’s news is likely to lead to further stress and uncertainty.
While we recognise the difficult economic situation, and the importance of ensuring the ASGSF can benefit as many kinship families as possible, reducing the level of therapeutic support available through the ASGSF could have significant implications for kinship families and the state.
In our last annual survey, 13% of kinship carers told us they were concerned about their ability to continue caring for their kinship children. Three-quarters of this group highlighted challenges managing social, emotional and behavioural difficulties as the main reason. Having experienced significant trauma, separation and loss, high-quality therapeutic support can make an immeasurable difference to the lives of children in kinship care and those caring for them, helping them to heal and thrive into adulthood.
Frustratingly, this decision comes at a time when the government is choosing to champion kinship care and is encouraging local authorities to review the support available to their own kinship families. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill contains a new legal duty to publish a kinship local offer, including signposting to therapeutic support, but that very support is now being eroded.
Furthermore, it’s clear that the welcome steps taken by the government to boost awareness of the ASGSF and increase applications from eligible kinship families are not being supported by commensurate funding to provide the level of therapeutic support needed. This confused and ill-considered approach to the sequencing of kinship care reform risks pushing more families to breaking point.
The government must use the forthcoming Spending Review to outline a long-term plan for how kinship families can access the therapeutic and emotional support they need. It makes sense to invest in kinship care, and further delays to improved financial, practical and emotional support for kinship families will only increase the risk of breakdown and more children entering an already overstretched care system…”
Adoption UK CEO Emily Frith said:
“These decisions will have a direct impact on children and young people who have had a very tough start in life and deserve the same chance to thrive as everyone else. We understand that this isn’t just about the Fund – it’s a consequence of belt tightening across government. But it’s very short sighted at a time when there are more adoptive families in crisis than ever before, and distressing news for everyone who has already faced an agonising wait to find out whether the Fund will continue to exist at all. The government must use the forthcoming spending review to make a commitment to build the Fund back up to where adopted and kinship children need it to be.”
For the 1 April Adoption UK Press Release see here
For the Coram BAAF Press Release see here
For the letter to the Secretary of State see here
For the Kinship Press Release see here
For the Adoption UK Press Release see here
Original reporting by Family Law Week