Our Response: Down, But Not Out
Today the government set out its plans for adoption and kinship support beyond the current Spending Review period, alongside the launch of a 12-week consultation on post-adoption support in England, including the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund.
What Has Actually Been Announced
Stripped of spin, today’s announcement confirms the following:
- The ASGSF will continue until March 2028.
- The overall budget will rise by 10 percent, to £55 million per year.
- The Fair Access Limit will remain at the reduced level of £3,000 per child per year. There will be no separate assessment fund and no matching funding.
- The government is planning fundamental reform of the current system, with a strong indication that the ASGSF will end in March 2028.
- Parent training and peer support will play a much larger role.
- Adoption England pilot schemes will be expanded, with a move away from a nationally administered fund towards local offers, framed around “efficiency” and “evidence”. There is no clarity on whether this funding will be ring-fenced, or what evidence is being relied upon, particularly given that pilots are being expanded without meaningful evaluation.
What is also clear is what has not changed. Despite a year of evidence, protest, testimony and engagement, the voices of children and young people, and parents and carers with lived experience, and specialist providers have not been meaningfully reflected in these decisions.
A Missed Opportunity
If today’s announcement leaves you feeling resigned, angry, or simply exhausted, we understand.
Over the last year, our community has refused to stay quiet. We have marched. We have written. We have collected evidence. We have met officials and MPs. We have explained, again and again, what life looks like for families raising children who have experienced trauma, loss and separation.
We have explained the need for timely, specialist therapeutic support. We have explained the false economy of delay, rationing and crisis response. We have explained the human cost of underfunding.
Today’s announcement feels, unmistakably, like our voices have not been heard. So far, there is little evidence that the Department for Education has engaged with this issue in good faith or with sufficient seriousness. That now has to change.
A Flawed Consultation, But Still Essential
Alongside today’s announcement, the government has launched a 12-week consultation on post-adoption and kinship support. It is disappointing that this consultation is only formally open to kinship families who are eligible for the ASGSF. It is also deeply concerning that the document presents its proposals as forward-looking reform, when much of what is described points towards cost control and a return to a pre-ASGSF landscape, a landscape where families were routinely told that support was unavailable until they were already in crisis.
That said, engagement matters. We strongly encourage families, providers and the wider sector to take part and to say, plainly and honestly, what children and families actually need. We also recommend that our community gives feedback on the consultation itself and on the assumptions and policies it advances.
We understand why many people feel reluctant. We understand the fatigue of being asked, yet again, to explain your child’s needs in the face of repeated dismissal. Our campaign team feel that too. That is why we will focus significant effort during this period on demanding transparency and rigour in how this consultation is conducted, analysed and acted upon.
Who Is Deciding the Future of Our Children’s Support?
Collecting responses is not enough. What matters is who analyses them, how they are interpreted, and what weight they are given. If this consultation is to mean anything, it must be examined by people who understand trauma, neurodevelopment, adoption and kinship care in the real world.
That means lived experience must sit alongside professional expertise. It means clarity about who is involved and what their remit is. Families have a right to know this, because the outcome will shape services that directly affect their children’s life chances.
The £3,000 Fair Access Limit Is Not Fit for Purpose
The decision to retain a £3,000 Fair Access Limit is one of the most damaging elements of today’s announcement. We know, and have repeatedly evidenced, that £3,000 is not enough to fund a proper multi-disciplinary assessment and still provide meaningful therapeutic support. Families and providers are being forced into impossible choices.
It does not fund year-round therapy. It excludes effective treatment models. It creates gaps in support and fractures therapeutic relationships that were built to support healing and stability.
By refusing to restore previous funding levels, the government is knowingly leaving thousands of children without access to the specialist support they need. This also makes the current inability of parents, charities and schools, including through Pupil Premium Plus, to top up funding with providers who are not Ofsted-registered an urgent and unresolved problem.
This is causing harm now. It requires immediate action.
Cuts Without Evidence, Harm Without Accountability
The per-child cuts imposed last year, in many cases between 60 and 90 percent, were made without consultation and without evidence. The damage caused by those cuts has been repeatedly raised by families, providers and sector bodies. That damage has not been acknowledged, addressed or remedied.
There has been no credible justification for the £3,000 limit, because none exists. This was a Treasury decision. A blunt, financially driven decision, taken without regard for children’s needs. The harm caused by that decision will now deepen.
A Risk to Specialist Therapeutic Expertise
Specialist therapeutic providers are already operating under extraordinary pressure. Many are deeply committed to this work and to the families they support.
The risk now is that significant numbers will be forced out altogether. If that happens, decades of specialist expertise, precisely the expertise the ASGSF was designed to sustain, will be lost. It will not be replaced by parent training courses. It will not be replaced by peer support alone. It certainly will not be replaced by government-run peer support schemes. Once lost, that expertise will not be easily rebuilt.
Specialist therapy providers have not been contacted, or told whether they will be able to continue providing services to adoption and kinship families, irrespective of the funding model. We have met with providers who have explained that the current Fair Access Limit creates an unsustainable funding environment.
What the Evidence Has Been Saying All Along
The ASGSF has consistently been identified in research, surveys and government-commissioned reviews as the most effective source of adoption support in England. Calls for its expansion, for the reversal of cuts, and for permanence have been widespread and sustained across the sector.
Against that backdrop, today feels like a significant moment, and not a positive one, in the history of adoption and kinship support.
What We Will Do Next
We are not walking away from this. As a campaign, we will continue to hold the government to account. We will scrutinise the consultation process closely and push for it to be conducted properly, transparently and with genuine engagement.
We will update on this work as it develops. We will also explore further collective action to ensure that families’ voices are not just heard, but cannot be ignored. There is still an opportunity to influence what comes next. But only if we stand together and act together.
We will shortly be convening online discussions to hear directly from families and therapeutic providers about how this announcement is landing, and what must happen next.
What We Have Built Together Still Matters
We wish we were writing a very different statement today. We are deeply sorry that we are not.
But it matters to say this.: Over the past year, adoptive and kinship families, therapeutic providers and sector organisations have come together in a way that has not been seen before. MPs now have a far clearer understanding of the realities families face. Wider public awareness has begun to shift. None of that disappears today.
Our Promise Stands
At our protest in May 2025, we made a clear promise. We said we would not stop fighting for our families. We renew that promise now.
We will continue to fight for children to have access to the right level of specialist therapeutic support, at the right time.
You are not alone. We stand with you.