Adoption Support Consultation: Guidance

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.  

Adoption and Kinship support plans which could outline available services, eligibility criteria, and escalation routes - this would build on the universal offer set out in Proposals 1-3 and tailor support to individual needs. Plans would be more transparent, comprehensive, and regularly reviewed. 

Potential benefits:  

• This proposal includes a commitment to develop a full Practice Guide on adoption support plans to reduce inconsistency. In Wales, where Practice Guides have previously been introduced, the Adoption Barometer has recorded improvements in the provision of services. E.g. after the introduction of a Practice Guide for life journey work, satisfaction with life journey materials among new adopters in Wales rose from 79% to 86%.  

• The enhanced support plans proposed here are intended to be bespoke, tailored plans for children and families with needs which cannot be met solely through a universal adoption support offer. The proposal goes beyond adoption support services by suggesting greater input from the NHS and schools so that social care, health and education support needs are also included and multi-agency support is co-ordinated.  This is welcome, as recommended in the Adoption Barometer. 

• The creation of a national Practice Guide and standardised approach to enhanced support planning may reduce the risk of a postcode lottery created by devolving funds to local authorities or regional adoption agencies (see proposal 7).  

• Having one lead coordinator overseeing the plan, and regular assessment to ensure it is reflective of the young person’s journey and needs, is welcome. 

Potential concerns:  

• The proposal does not address the gap between what is available on paper and what is actually offered to families. There is no mention of a statutory requirement to provide the support identified by an assessment of support needs, nor any reassurance that support will be needs-driven rather than funding-driven. Much of what is laid out is already happening, or being developed. 

• Greater expert input from the NHS and schools would be welcomed, but adoptive families often report very poor experiences of accessing existing services since they have neither the expertise nor resources to properly support adoptees. Only 29% of 16-25-year-old adoptees who had accessed CAMHS support agreed that the support made a positive difference and half of adoptive parents do not believe that their child's teachers have a good understanding of the needs of adopted children (Adoption Barometer 2025).  

• While better support planning is welcome, this proposal does not take account of families who find themselves at crisis point, often driven by external circumstances. Planned support pathways are important, but plans for robust crisis intervention, if required, are also needed.  

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. 

Proposal 6: Require clinical adoption support therapies to be compliant with NHS evidence standards. Ensure all interventions are well evidenced and assessed

The aim here is to ensure the clinical/therapeutic interventions offered (including via the ASGSF) are meeting evidenced-based standards and having a sufficiently desired impact. Also, to ensure that non-clinical interventions meet certain standards, where possible.  

Potential benefits:  

• Families would be reassured that both clinical and non-clinical (e.g. social work, educational, community based) interventions are being offered based on evidence they have a positive impact. For clinical interventions, the evidence would be based on the results of randomised, controlled trials and recommendations by NICE. For non-clinical interventions, a new outcomes measurement system would need to be created.  

• The proposal recognises that, currently, availability and timeliness of interventions has an impact on what is offered to families. It is hoped this would also be factored into any analysis of impact. 

• The proposal acknowledges the need to ensure support that is currently benefiting young people is not disrupted during this process.  

Potential concerns:  

• As with proposal 5 above, while a strong evidence-base for therapeutic interventions is desirable, there is concern that many interventions families find useful may not be included. This is because NICE guidelines prioritise specific therapies that lend themselves to a specific type of testing (randomized control trials). However, this is not the only way of working out what works best. 

• Whilst the proposal is for the Department for Education to work with the Department for Health and Social Care and clinical experts to evidence standards, it is absolutely vital that those professionals with years of expertise working with these cohorts are consulted and feed in to early plans. In particular, practitioners delivering therapeutic support services to adoptive and kinship families via the ASGSF.  

• The proposal states that the Department for Education could also explore whether the range of non-clinical interventions offered meets the needs of this cohort. Again, it is absolutely vital that adopted people and those in kinship care, as well as the professionals working with them, are closely feeding into this process. 

• It is not clear that the timetable set out in the consultation gives adequate time for robust testing and longer term outcome measures to be evaluated. 

Proposal 7: Devolve Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund funding and responsibility to regional and/or local decision makers

This proposal sets out a vision for how the ASGSF could be run from 2028 onwards. The aim is that instead of a centralised Fund as we currently have, this funding will be devolved to either Regional Adoption Agencies or Local Authorities to administer and be responsible for. This is to ensure funding is held and administered by those ‘closest to the children and families it affects’. 

Potential benefits:  

• Providing therapeutic support within local authorities and regional adoption agencies may reduce the time taken to access support as social workers won’t have to apply to a centrally held fund on behalf of applicants, and the assumption is this will reduce the administrative burden. 

• Regional commissioning of support services may enable more joined-up approaches to support since all the services will effectively be ‘in house’ and there may be opportunities for economies of scale, reducing overall costs, and improved accessibility to services.  

Potential concerns:  

• Devolving the ASGSF funding to LAs or RAAs could effectively mean the end of guaranteed ring-fenced funds for adoption support, as we currently have. The risk is that the money meant for therapeutic support interventions gets pooled with wider RAA or LA budgets. The impact of this on children and families is unknown, but many families have already reported that RAAs and LAs are refusing to ‘top up’ funding gaps for therapy caused by cuts to the ASGSF because of lack of resources.   

• There is currently no formula for distributing national adoption support funds at the local level. The proposal is that this would be developed by the DfE and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is not yet clear how a fair distribution of funding would be achieved. Obviously demand within any geographical area changes over time. 

• Adoption UK has significant concerns about the proposal to devolve funding to LAs. The proposal states that this would be via the Children, Families and Youth Grant. Currently, this grant includes funding for early intervention where families are struggling, for virtual schools’ duties towards previously looked after children, and for young people leaving care amongst other things. Should the adoption support funding be folded into this grant, it is essential that it is ring-fenced for adoption support (within a coherent definition) with robust accountability for LAs not fully compliant and clear appeal mechanisms for agencies/families. 

• Devolving funding to the local or regional level and relying on local commissioning of services risks creating a postcode lottery where the support available is dependent on what has been commissioned. While this risk may be offset by the creation of a national Practice Guide (see proposal 4), the premise must be that support for adoptees, children in kinship care and their families is offered on the basis of what is needed rather than what is available.   

• The options do not include an improved centralised model, which would be Adoption UK’s preference. 85% of families who accessed support through the ASGSF last year say it has had a positive impact on their family. Whilst we recognise it requires improvement, the system has had a transformative impact on thousands of families and there is no evidence put forward in this consultation that devolving the funding would improve outcomes for adoptees and those in kinship care; or even that it would save money.