Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the number of hours of therapy an applicant to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund would receive using this year’s Fair Access Limit should they also require a specialist assessment costing the average amount calculated by her Department; and what assessment she has made of the adequacy of this.

The number of hours of therapy available to a child after a specialist assessment funded by the adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF) is dependent on a variety of factors. This includes the cost of the therapy and in which financial year the specialist assessment was completed. It is also important to note that additional funding may be made available by the local authority or regional adoption agency beyond that provided by the ASGSF, therefore increasing the amount of therapy available, should the specialist assessment recommend this.

Specialist assessments vary in cost, although the maximum the department can fund is £2,500 and the current average spend is slightly below this. If the maximum is used on a specialist assessment, this will clearly limit the amount of therapy which can be funded under the Fair Access Limit in the same financial year.

Outcomes measurement tool (OMT) data enables the adequacy of ASGSF-funded support to be monitored at local and national level. The department started to collect data from OMTs for ASGSF-funded therapies in December 2023. As therapy treatment concludes, this data will give an overall picture of the impact and adequacy of individual ASGSF-funded therapies. We are currently developing tools and methods for assessing this emerging information.