Government support for children in adoptive and kinship placements

A debate on support for children in adoptive and kinship placements will take place in Westminster Hall on 20 May 2025. This briefing provides background information, including on recent changes to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund.

Support for kinship care

The government defines kinship care as “any situation in which a child is being raised in the care of a friend or family member who is not their parent.” The 2021 Census estimated around 141,000 children were living in kinship care in England and Wales (1.1% of all children).

There are several types of kinship care arrangement and the type of arrangement can affect the support available. A number of recent reports have suggested that the support provided for kinship placements is not sufficient and there is considerable variation between areas in the support available.

Further information on the support available for kinship placements, and recent policy developments, is provided in the Library briefing on kinship carers in England.

As set out in section 5.3 of the briefing, in October 2024 the government announced it would provide £40 million to trial a new kinship allowance in up to 10 local authorities. It said this would “test whether paying an allowance to cover certain costs – like supporting a child to settle into a new home with relatives – can help increase the number of children taken in by family members and friends.”

The government has said it expects the trial to begin in autumn 2025.

Support for adoptive families

Under section 4 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, adoptive families have a legal right to an assessment of their adoption support needs from the responsible local authority. The assessment covers a range of needs, including mental health, the need for therapeutic services and help with behavioural problems.

While authorities are required to carry out an assessment of support needs, the provision of support will depend on the family’s assessed needs. Further information is provided in section nine of the adoption statutory guidance, published by the Department for Education.

The charity Adoption UK publishes an annual “Adoption Barometer” report, based on a survey of adoptive families. The latest report was published in May 2024 and was based on a survey carried out in January and February 2024. The report’s findings on adoption support in England (PDF) included:

• 38% of adoptive families said they were facing severe challenges of reaching crisis point.
• 70% of adoptive families said they were satisfied with the quality of core adoption support provided by their adoption agency.
• 52% were satisfied with the quality of enhanced support provided by their agency.
• Where respondents had received enhanced support funded by the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (see below), 82% said it had made a positive difference.
• 23% of parents agreed that appropriate support is available for teens and young adults.

Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund

The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) provides funding to local authorities to pay for therapeutic services for the families of adopted children and children who were previously looked after and are now looked after under a special guardianship order or a child arrangements order. The fund is administered by Mott Macdonald, a consultancy firm.

Up to the end of March 2025, funding from the ASGSF was subject to the following fair access limits:

• £2,500 per child per year for specialist assessment
• £5,000 per child per year for therapy

Where there was an urgent need for higher cost support, the ASGSF could fund up to 50% of the amount above the fair access limits, with the local authority match-funding the remainder, up to a maximum of £30,000 per child including the fair access limits.

Funding for 2025/26 confirmed

Towards the end of the 2024/25 financial year, concerns were that funding for the ASGSF was only committed to the end of March 2025 and the government had not confirmed if funding would continue after this date. However, in response to an urgent question on 1 April 2025, the Children’s Minister, Janet Daby, confirmed that £50 million would be committed for the ASGSF in 2025/26. This is similar to the total level of funding provided in previous years; the fund was worth £48 million a year between 2022/23 and 2024/25.

The government has said that funding after 2025/26 will be “subject to spending review decisions” and the government will “make a further announcement in due course about the plans for the ASGSF from April 2026.”

Changes to individual funding limits for 2025/26

On 14 April 2025, the press reported that the Department for Education had sent a letter to stakeholders setting out changes to the ASGSF from April 2025. The changes were then confirmed in a written ministerial statement on 22 April 2025. The changes include:

• The £5,000 fair access limit for the cost of therapy provided each year was reduced to £3,000 – that is, a 40% reduction.
• The ASGSF will no longer match fund support packages above the £3,000 limit.
• There will no longer be a separate allowance of £2,500 to fund specialist assessments over and above any funding for therapy.
• Provisions for children and families to receive support across financial years will end for the time being, meaning all therapy packages or assessments funded through the ASGSF in 2025/26 will have to be completed by 31 March 2026.

The written statement explained why the government had made the changes:

we are in a challenging fiscal climate and are having to make tough but fair decisions across the public sector to address the £22 billion black hole that the government inherited and to ensure this fund is financially sustainable

Demand for support from the ASGSF continues to grow significantly. In 2025-26, in order to maximise the number of children who can access this fund, we have had to make the difficult decision to set the maximum amount of funding for an individual child each year, known as the Fair Access Limit, at £3,000.

In response to a topical question on 28 April, the Children’s Minister similarly suggested the government had “chosen the fairest approach to manage tight resources in the face of increasing demand for support.”

Stakeholder concerns

Stakeholders have raised concerns about the changes. For example, four sector organisations wrote to the Secretary of State for Education on 17 April 2025 calling on the government to reconsider. The letter stated that the changes:

will have a direct impact on the futures of thousands of children and young adults, has caused widespread distress and anger among affected families, and appears economically short-sighted.

In a briefing published ahead of the debate (PDF), the charity Kinship suggested the changes are “directly undermining” government efforts to improve support for children in kinship placements. It added that the increase in demand, in part driven by “welcome efforts” to increase ASGSF applications from eligible kinship families, was “completely foreseeable”.

Other concerns raised by stakeholders are set out in the following articles:

• Community Care, DfE makes huge cut to Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund payments
• BBC News, Charities criticise 'distressing' cuts to adoption fund
• Children and Young People Now, DfE slashes adoption support grants
• Adoption UK, Significant cut in government funding for adopted and kinship children
• Kinship, Kinship responds to government update on adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF)
• Family Rights Group, Family Rights Group expresses deep concern at changes to Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund

Impact of the change

There is only limited data publicly available on the ASGSF and the government does not hold data on how many families are eligible for the ASGSF at any one time.

Data on the ASGSF in 2023/24 is available in a data insights report published in September 2024 (PDF) by Mott Macdonald. The report states that in 2023/24:

• £49 million was paid out from the ASGSF in England. £11 million was surrendered, meaning that it was returned by local authorities because the service did not go ahead, ended early, or did not complete in the financial year the funding was allocated to.
• 19,495 applications for funding from the ASGSF were approved in England.

The report does not, for example, say how many applications for funding in excess of £3,000 were approved in 2023/24.

In response to a parliamentary question on 13 May 2025, the government published some additional statistics on the ASGSF. These showed that in the 2024/25 financial year:

• There were 15,478 applications for therapy under then £5,000 fair access limit. The average value per application was £3,335.
• There were 375 applications for match funding for therapy, with an average value of £4,297.
• There were 2,647 applications for specialist assessment, with an average value of £2,400.
• There were 34 applications for match funding for specialist assessments, with an average value of £2,927.

The response set out the following caveats concerning the data:

Applications may cover funding for more than one child. Hence, average values may not align with the FAL [fair access limits] for individual children. In addition, some applications which include match funding also fund continuation of therapy where a previous application has been submitted at below the FAL level, but then a small amount is required to top-up the therapy provided. These small top-up applications are match funded, but small in value, and therefore fall below the £5,000 average. This will also affect the average costs.

A parliamentary question from 24 April 2025 asking how many applications to the ASGSF were awarded therapy costing between £3,000 and £5,000 in 2024/25 is awaiting answer.

The government has said its review of the equalities impact assessment will be “made available in the House Libraries in due course.” At the time of writing this had not yet been deposited in the House Libraries.