We recommend you read this really helpful guide to the consultation written by Adoption UK
https://www.adoptionuk.org/pages/faqs/category/adoption-support-consultation
We also recommend that you do not rush to respond to the consultation; it doesn’t close until 5th May. Responses can be submitted here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/adoption-support-that-works-for-all
It might be helpful to take time to fully understand what is being proposed and the potential consequences, and to read the guidance and information that will come out from various sources, including this guide from Adoption UK.
As you will have seen, our campaign has serious concerns about the proposals within the consultation and the overall direction of travel for post adoption and kinship support.
We also have real concerns about the design of some of the consultation questions, the leading nature of these, and their sometimes ambiguous wording. This occurs across both the adult response form and the child and young person form.
We will give some examples taken directly from the form below that you may find helpful (picture example below as well):
Example 1. Strengthen peer and community support for adoptive parents and children. Do you agree with this proposal?
When taken alone, it would be easy, for example, to strongly agree with this statement. But if it added further context that a consequence of this would be a reduction in access to specialist therapeutic support, you may answer differently.
Example 2. Provide proactive support for adopted and kinship children at key life stages, such as transitions to secondary school. Do you agree with this proposal?
It would also be easy to strongly agree with this, but when you realise that what they deem to be proactive support is 6 x 2-hour parent sessions or training when your child is in Year 6 at school, you may decide you don’t think it’s adequate or proactive at all.
Example 3. Require clinical adoption support therapies to be compliant with NHS evidence standards. Ensure all interventions are well evidenced and assessed. Do you agree with this proposal?
This sounds good in theory but fails to recognise the many very effective therapies that have been developed but cannot be assessed under the standards suggested here, or have not yet been assessed in this way.
This proposal has the potential to significantly limit some well known, effective therapy models that the government has funded through the ASGSF but where appropriate research into them has not been funded at the same time. That doesn’t mean evidence doesn’t exist or that the therapy models aren’t effective; it means investment should be made in this area.
Limiting therapy to those currently offered through CAMHS, for example, would be a mistake and could see the unique nature of our children’s needs overlooked. The ASGSF was designed because of the very specialist nature of need and the very specialist nature of the therapeutic interventions required. It is well evidenced that statutory services fail our community. We absolutely support growing the evidence base for therapies used, but it is important to remember that absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.
Example 4. Improving value for money to ensure every pound spent is used efficiently, sustainably and on families. Do you agree with this proposal?
This sounds great, but what do they actually mean? There is nowhere near enough information to make an informed decision about this at present. For example, money can be very well spent on specialist therapeutic provision, but it can also be the more expensive option in the short term while saving huge amounts of money in the long term and, more importantly, providing children, young people and adults with the support they really need to thrive. However, with this leading question, the DfE could gather responses that the government can then use as they wish to support whichever narrative they choose.
To summarise:
If we are all led by the nature of the questions to select strongly agree by the form’s very design, the government (Department for Education) could end up with substantial quantitative data that appears to support their proposals when, in actual fact, you aren’t in support of them at all.
We do not currently know how they will present the qualitative data collected within the comments section of these questionnaires. We do not know who will be interpreting the data or information collected, or what weight it will carry in decision making.
We therefore recommend you take time to consider the questions carefully and your responses to them.
If you do not agree with the overall proposals being made within the consultation around the future of post adoption and kinship support, then your answers to these leading questions may need to reflect this.