Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett).

Imagine for a moment that you are a child. You endured abuse, neglect or violence, or your parents were unwell or fought or could not cope. You were then taken into care and had to leave everything behind. You spent 15 months in the care system, as the average adoptee does, and had to deal with different placements, different places, different spaces, different schools, different teachers, different friends and different routines. Everything familiar and comforting was stripped away. Your identity was eroded and confused. You also had to deal with courts and meetings, and social workers and questions. You had to deal with all that before being placed in a loving forever home.

That is the story of 80% of adoptees. No wonder young people need specialist support. Let me put it this way: on top of the tragedy, trauma, pain and loss, these young people now have to regulate their social, emotional and psychological challenges. More than the average will be neuroatypical, and 30% will have self-harmed. We have to recognise the centrality of getting support to these young people at the right time, to ensure that not only their now but their long-term future is built on stable support.

The instability we saw earlier this year must never be repeated. I personally long for the relevant services to be in the NHS and across public services, but we know that they are not for now. They are really specialist, so we must enable every single child to have a full assessment, for the child and their family, of their complex needs and the therapeutic interventions they need. Those therapies need to be the right therapies—not on the side and on the cheap and what is in the mainstream, but the specific therapies needed to build stability again in these young people’s lives. Family therapy is also required to ensure that we see not family breakdowns—the proportion is now 7% for adoptions—but instead families coming together, with strong bonds for life.

I know that the Minister—and, indeed, you, Ms Lewell —could not be more dedicated on these issues, but we cannot go through this cycle of not knowing how much support an individual could have. It must be uncapped, because there can be no limit on getting this right for a child.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Ms Lewell. This morning, I laid before Parliament a written ministerial statement confirming that the adoption and special guardianship support fund will continue next year. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) for securing this important debate, and I thank all other hon. Members who helped to secure it. I acknowledge the contributions from the chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and from the chair of the kinship care APPG, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn). I acknowledge her lobbying to extend the fund.

Kicking and screaming is not something I do, however, and the personal attacks of the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), lower this debate and what we wish to achieve. I also say to the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul), that her party had many opportunities to secure the adoption and special guardianship support fund when it was in Government, and it chose not to—in fact, it reduced the funding. I felt it was appropriate to put those things in order.

I welcome the opportunity to speak about this Government, the adoption and special guardianship support fund and our record of supporting the wellbeing of children. I have heard the many contributions and the heartwarming descriptions of situations that really do affect the lives of children who have been adopted or taken into kinship care. The adoption and special guardianship support fund enables valuable therapeutic support to be provided to adopted and special guardianship children who were previously in care. As I said, I recognise the particular needs of this cohort of children and young people. I know many of them will have had a challenging early life experiences.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Janet Daby]

I will make as much progress as I can, because I have been asked many questions in this debate and in many other scenarios and areas. It is very important that I am at least heard for the majority of my speech.

That is why the Government are committed to ensuring that these children and their families have support available that meets their needs. Therefore, I am pleased to confirm that applications to the adoption and special guardianship support fund that run into the next financial year, 2026-27, can now be made. That is part of a wider continuation of the scheme in the next financial year, and full details will be set out later in the autumn. I am absolutely behind making sure that we can present that information in a timely way. That is clearly acknowledged.

I am pleased to say that we will also begin public engagement in the new year to consider the future of the adoption and special guardianship support fund into 2028 and beyond. I am keen to work across Government with children, families and sector representatives to understand more about what support can and should be provided at a sustainable level.

The adoption and special guardianship support fund has now been running for 10 years, and in that time, it has helped to provide support for more than 54,000 children. Independent evaluations have found that the fund has been successful in improving the lives of recipient children and their families. The last independent evaluation of the fund in 2022 found that 83% of parents and guardians had found support funded by the adoption and special guardianship support fund “helpful” or “very helpful”. We also know from parents and carers about the difference the adoption and special guardianship support fund has made to their lives.

However, the fund is not the only source of support available to adopted and special guardianship children and their families, although it is a significant one. Adoption England is a key partner of the Department in improving adoption support. We have provided it with £8.8 million this year for specific projects to improve adoption support. That includes funding for developing national standards, developing centres of excellence as multidisciplinary teams with education and health, and establishing services designed to respond to adoptive families in crisis quicker and more effectively.

We are working to improve the support available to children in kinship care. Last year, the Government announced a £40 million package to test the payment of an allowance to cover the additional costs of supporting children to move into kinship care. We have also published updated statutory guidance on kinship care for local authorities, and we appointed the first kinship care ambassador to advocate for kinship families across Government. Across England, more than 140 kinship peer-to-peer support groups are already up and running, providing kinship carers with vital spaces to connect, share their experiences and support one another. Alongside that, a comprehensive package of training and support is being actively delivered, ensuring that every kinship carer has access to the resources they need to thrive. We have also expanded the role of the virtual school heads to champion the education, attainment and attendance of children in kinship care who were previously in care.

This Government’s approach to informing children’s social care will transform services and transition towards earlier intervention. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will shift the focus of the children’s social care system and put children’s needs first. Our landmark investments in family help and Best Start family hubs will help families to access earlier support before they reach crisis point. Those measures and investments are alongside the adoption and special guardianship support fund so that specialist support is available should families need it.

On health, Ministers and officials engage regularly with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England on how we can improve support for children, and we will continue to do that. The most recent NHS plan sets out how we intend to improve mental health services.

In order to ensure that the fund was financially stable in 2025-26, I announced a number of changes to the management of the budget. In the interests of transparency, I committed to making the equalities impact assessment, which helped to inform decision making, available for review. On 17 July, I placed the assessment in the Libraries of both Houses. It provides a breakdown of the available data and explains the rationale behind our decision to make changes.

In particular, it highlights the fact that, had we not made changes, many children could have been prevented from accessing therapy. The number of children accessing the fund has increased by 2,000 year on year. The equalities impact assessment is kept under review, and my officials update it regularly to better understand the impact of any changes on vulnerable children. The Department also publishes annual data on the adoption and special guardianship support fund.

[Rachael Maskell]

Does the hon. Member share my concern that if we are going to make the investment for the long term, we have to look at the number of children in care? In 2010, there were 64,000, and in 2024, 83,630. That places significant demand on the adoption and special guardianship support fund. Will she look at the work that York council is doing on halving the number of children in care? Surely that will reduce demand on the fund.