To: Directors of Children’s Services
22 November 2017
THE ADOPTION SUPPORT FUND
The Adoption Support Fund has been a great
success with over 21,000 adoptive
and special guardianship families and over 25,500
children receiving therapeutic support since it was launched in May 2015.
Thank you for making this possible.
You will recall that it became necessary to
introduce fair access limits and to ask local authorities to share the
costs of support over and above the fair access limits through a match funding
approach because of the scale of demand. This approach has been in place
for some time and it is good to see that almost half of local authorities
have made applications for match funding, providing additional
therapeutic support for almost 250 children. I am
also pleased to see that about a quarter of local authorities are
providing additional funding where cases do not meet the
match funding criteria a further 97 children have benefitted from
this. I would urge all local authorities to consider using
match funding where this is necessary to meet children’s needs.
Demand for the fund continues to grow and is
almost three times the level it was in 2015-16. In recognition of that
rising demand, I am pleased to announce that an additional £1m will be made available this year,
bringing spend on the Fund to £29m this year. Whilst funding has
increased, and will continue to do so until 2020, it remains necessary to
keep the fair access limits in place. I want to offer the sector some certainty and confirm
that the existing fair access limits up to £2,500 for specialist
assessments and up to £5,000 for therapy will remain in place
for the next two financial years.
The recently published evaluation covering the
early implementation of the Fund found that
the children accessing the Fund showed substantially higher levels
of emotional, behavioural and developmental needs that both children in
the general population and when compared to looked after children as
a whole. It also found that 84% of parents believed that the Fund had
helped their child. You can find the evaluation here.
The evaluation also found that the efficiency and
quality of assessments was improving and that parents were generally
satisfied with the assessment process. That said, I continue to hear
concerns from some parents and the voluntary sector about
delays securing assessments of adoption support needs. I would
be grateful if you could ask your teams to look into this and consider
ways in which
both timeliness of assessments and subsequent
applications to the Fund could be improved.
DfE is commissioning a further evaluation
that will take us through to the end of this parliament. It will be
closely aligned with the evaluation of the Regional Adoption Agency (RAA)
programme, also currently being commissioned. The RAA programme is
progressing well with five RAAs now live. Adoption is in a significant
period of change. It is important that the Fund is able to operate
successfully in the emerging regionalised system.
We are funding three RAAs Adoption Counts, One Adoption West and Adoption
South West to consider how the ASF would operate in a regionalised
framework. We have asked them to prioritise work this year on reaching
agreements with local authority partners on the approach to match funding
applications to the Fund. If children and families
do not receive the therapeutic support they
need, they are more likely to experience an adoption breakdown with the
child or children returning to care at great expense to local authorities.
It is, therefore, in the best interests of families, local
authori ties and RAAs to agree a process for match funding
these applications.
I know that some voluntary organisations are
anxious about a lack of certainty during this period of change. Some
Regional Adoption Agency projects have agreed plans to extend existing
support contracts for a year or more whilst they develop their
commissioning strategy. This has helped the voluntary sector to make
plans, and I would encourage all local authorities to consider how they
manage this transition in a way that protects
vital services.
The next couple of years will be critical and we
must ensure that we build on the early success of the fund and the
emerging RAAs, to ensure all adopted children get the support they need.
Please accept my thanks and appreciation for the
work that you and your teams are doing to support some of the most
vulnerable children in society.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Goodwill MP
Minister of State for Children and Families
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