Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of changes to individual application funding under the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund in April 2025 on eligible adoptive and kinship families.

The revised criteria for the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) were introduced in April 2025 and were designed to ensure support for all those applying for ASGSF funding. An equalities impact assessment was published in July 2025.

Analysis shows that in 2024/25, users of the fund had an average spend of only £3,170. In 2025/26, the average spend was reduced slightly to £2,537, well within the Fair Access Limit of £3,000. There were 22,166 recipients of funding in 2025/26, including nearly 1,800 specialist assessments, demonstrating continued access to support. Local authorities and Regional Adoption Agencies may supplement funding where additional support is assessed to be required.

In February, the department announced the continuation of the ASGSF to the end of the Spending Review period in 2028. A consultation on the longer-term future of adoption support, including a call for evidence, concluded in May and the department is continuing to assess input and findings.