Proposal 5: Standardise needs assessments for adopted and eligible kinship children. Commission social care, health, and education support based on their needs

Potential benefits:  

• This proposal recognises that assessments of support needs must consider the impacts of, for example, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and neurodevelopmental conditions, alongside the impacts of adverse early life experiences, trauma and attachment disruptions.  

• It suggests that multi-disciplinary teams could carry out assessments of support needs using an agreed, standardised, evidence-based protocol, rather than the current situation where assessments are often carried out by individual social workers and protocols are unclear, leading to inconsistent outcomes.  

Potential concerns:  

• The proposal suggests that therapeutic interventions could be limited to those recognised in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines and Foundations Practice Guides as these are “evidence-based”.  While a strong evidence-base for therapeutic interventions is desirable, there is the concern that some interventions that families find useful may fail the ‘evidence-base’ test simply because the required evidence is not yet available.  

• The Foundations Practice Guide for foster carers and adoptive parents is not yet published, and the Guide for kinship carers makes recommendations that are largely focused on supporting carers (parenting support, peer support, training, etc.) rather than examining the evidence for therapeutic interventions for children. 

• There is no mention of when these assessments are to be carried out, or how they will fit with adoption support plans or longer term planning. As well as pre-placement assessments, Adoption UK have called for agencies to offer adoptees assessments of need at critical stages in their adoption journey, in line with government’s ambition to ensure smoother transitions. For example, the Adoption Barometer (2025) calls for agencies to offer all adoptees aged 10 an assessment of needs covering education, social care and health, to inform an update of their adoption support plan and to identify what can be put in place to assist their transition to secondary school.   

• A multidisciplinary approach is vital to support the needs of adopted children and young people. However, there needs to be qualifying standards for those professionals working within these teams; and responsibilities must be reflective of expertise.  

• The consultation document highlights that ‘consideration is needed on how this proposal would be embedded within a broader care pathway’. This is vital. Adoption support services do not operate in a vacuum and there must be greater recognition that wider services, such as CAMHS, are currently not fit for purpose to provide the necessary mental health support for many children and young people who are adopted or in kinship care. This is because of both a lack of capacity and a lack of adoption-competent therapists. Until these services are fit for purpose, referring into them can be damaging, adding further delay to the process of getting appropriate support.