Proposal 3: Provide proactive support for adopted and kinship children at key life stages

Potential benefits:  

• The support needs of families and children change over time and Adoption UK has frequently called for longer-term planning of support for adoptive families, including proactively reaching out to families to offer targeted support at potential trigger points. This proposal recognises that need and identifies school transitions, adolescence and the transition to adulthood as life stages where extra support may be needed. This is welcome. 

• The DfE has already committed to delivering a parenting support offer for families whose children are due to transition into secondary school from September 2026 across England, regardless of the outcome of the consultation.  

• The proposal recognises the importance of engaging across sectors, for example by involving regional and voluntary adoption agencies, local authorities, education settings and virtual school heads.  

• The proposal also recognises the importance of user-led design of support services and states that a future national roll out of the programme would learn from and be co-designed with families.  

Potential concerns:  

•  The emphasis is on providing support for parents, with a focus on ‘workshops for parents, carers and the child’ and ‘educational toolkits’ for parents on school transitions. This places the responsibility/problem on the parent or child themselves, overlooking the systemic factors that exacerbate difficult transitions and which ignores the fundamental role that schools, social workers and other agencies must play in supporting effective transitions.  

• The proposal doesn’t mention building these transition points into the adoptee’s adoption support plan, which could be a vital way for adoptees, their parents and social workers to monitor support planning and ensure it is regularly assessed and reflective of the child/young person’s needs throughout their adoption journey. 

• The proposal does not recognise the lifelong impacts of adoption, nor predictable trigger points occurring later in life, such as becoming a parent, or the loss of an adoptive parent, kinship carer or birth parent.   

• Core support (advice, training, information) can be helpful, but it is not a panacea for the needs of adopted or kinship children. Adoption UK research suggests that one of the key benefits of early access to high quality core support is that families who receive this are more likely to seek help for tailored, therapeutic support earlier, and it is this that means they are less likely to reach crisis point. Core support is therefore one element that can be helpful, but does not cancel the need for more bespoke support from appropriate professionals. 

• The case study given under this proposal is vague, giving little detail about about the specific programmes RAAs are working on, therefore is difficult to respond to. 

• One significant area of concern is that adoption agencies are training up social workers to deliver therapeutic support, albeit under ‘clinical supervision’.  This relates to the assertion in the consultation regarding the ‘unnecessary medicalisation’ of adopted children. This is a completely unsubstantiated claim, at best unhelpful, and at worse, damaging to the thousands of children and young people and their families who face battles to get support that helps them.  

• Whilst it is true that demand for therapeutic interventions has increased over time, this is simply reflective of need. Adoption UK evidence shows 53% of adopted children have diagnosed social, emotional and mental health needs, 50% have diagnosed attachment difficulties or disorders, 35% have diagnosed sensory processing difficulties and 23% have diagnosed ADHD (Adoption Barometer 2025). DfE data shows that 50% of previously looked after children have SEND. One study found that over 70% of adopted children were possibly at risk of having FASD. Demand for ASGSF-funded interventions has remained high because of the clinically high level and complex needs of adopted children. This proposal completely disregards that need.  

• This proposal again mentions linking in with BestStart Family Hubs, but these hubs are universal services not designed to support the specific challenges facing adoptive and kinship families and, despite being available for families with children aged 0-19 (25 with SEND) are heavily focused on services for the early years, such as school readiness.