Adoption fund to continue after families ‘left in limbo’

A fund to provide therapy for adopted children will continue, the government has confirmed, after families criticised uncertainty over its future.

Families had been calling for clarity for months about the adoption and special guardian support fund, which expired on Monday.

Children and Families Minister Janet Daby recognised the delay had caused “a very difficult time” for many people but said £50m had been allocated for the fund for this year.

MPs welcomed the announcement, but said the delay had left families “in limbo”, with some therapy stopped and services closed because of the hiatus.

Daby did not confirm when applications for the fund would reopen.

In response to an urgent question from Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Munira Wilson in the House of Commons, Daby said she regretted the delay in announcing the continuation of the fund.

She added: “We will be announcing further details to the House in the coming days and opening applications to families and children across our country as soon as we can”.

The fund, which was established in 2015, is available for adopted children and young people up to the age of 21, as well as those aged up to 25 if they have an education, health and care plan.

Each eligible child can access £2,500 for specialist assessment and £5,000 for therapy.

Wilson said MPs had been asking for months about the future of the fund but had been “batted away”.

She said one of her constituents had told her how her daughter had “started to regress” since her last therapy programme had ended, while some providers had resorted to fundraising to continue to offer support.

Conservative shadow education secretary Laura Trott described the situation as “utterly chaotic”.

“It is utterly extraordinary that today we’ve had to summon the government to the chamber to provide clarity on whether they’ve axed a programme which ended yesterday and supports 20,000 of our most vulnerable young people,” she said.

“The government have been given lots of opportunities to clarify the funding situation.”

Lisa Mainwaring, an adoptive parent based in south-east England, has been using the fund for several years, since her children, now eight and five years old, came into her care.

She described the fund and the support it provides as “revolutionary”, telling the BBC: “I’m not sure that we’d be together as a family without it”.

The uncertainty over the future of the fund left Lisa in a difficult position.

After a “complete scramble” to get the application for her eldest son submitted through the council by the deadline, her youngest did not receive the assessment needed to apply for the fund before the cut-off date.

This means she does not know when he will start receiving therapy.

Lisa called on the government to apologise over the stress and uncertainty the delayed announcement had caused.

“Parenting a child who has been adopted is hard enough,” she said.

“It’s stressful, and we’ve gone into this with full compassion in our hearts. We really want to help.”

Alison Woodhead, from the charity Adoption UK, said: “It’s an enormous relief that the fund has been confirmed for another year, at the same level as last year.”

However, she called for the fund to be permanent to “prevent the distress this delay has caused from ever happening again”.

The charity said dithering over the fund had prompted some providers to seek work elsewhere, meaning many families will now face longer waits for support because of a backlog of applications.