The Department for Education (DfE) has made huge cuts in payments for families to resource therapy through the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF).
Less than two weeks after confirming that the fund would continue – one day after it expired – the DfE has made four significant restrictions to the support each child or family can receive through the ASGSF in 2025-26:
- The £5,000 fair access limit (FAL) for the cost of therapy provided each year – in place since 2016 – is being cut to £3,000.
- The ASGSF will no longer match fund more expensive support packages above this limit. It previously contributed 50% of the cost of annual therapy up to a maximum of £30,000 for cases that were higher risk or met other specified criteria, with councils funding the rest.
- Families will no longer be able to benefit from a separate allowance of £2,500 to fund specialist assessments over and above any funding for therapy. While funding of up to £2,500 for an assessment will be available, this must be resourced from within the overall £3,000 limit, potentially leaving families with only £500 for therapy.
- It will end – for the time being – provisions for children and families to receive support across financial years, meaning all therapy packages or assessments funded through the ASGSF in 2025-26 will have to have been completed by 31 March 2026.
Changes ‘designed to maximise number of children supported’
The overall level of the funding in 2025-26, at £50m, is similar to that provided annually since 2022-23, and in a letter to stakeholders, the DfE said the restrictions were designed to “maximise the number of children who are able to access this fund” in the context of “significantly” growing demand.
“We recognise that this is a significant change, but it is being made to ensure that the funding can continue to support as many families as possible,” said the DfE’s ASGSF team leader, Helen Walker. “The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund will still enable those eligible to access a significant package of therapeutic support, tailored to meet their individual needs.”
However, the £5,000 limit was widely seen by sector leaders and providers as inadequate to fund therapy for up to 12 months for care-experienced children with significant trauma due to the abuse and neglect they had suffered.
Increased delay in accessing support
And the decision is also set to trigger further delays to the provision of therapy for children and families left in limbo due to the DfE only confirming the continuation of the ASGSF for 2025-26 on 1 April, the start of the financial year.
Regional adoption agencies (RAAs) and local authorities had lodged applications with the ASGSF – which is managed on the DfE’s behalf by consultancy Mott MacDonald – that had been put on hold pending a decision on the fund’s continuation.
However, any of these that exceed the new £3,000 limit will now be returned to applicants, meaning RAAs and councils will need to amend and resubmit them.
This is likely to mean longer waits for therapy to start for newly approved children and families and damaging breaks in support for those for whom councils or RAAs needed to reapply for funds.
Also, Community Care understands that the fund has not yet reopened for applications to be considered in any case.
‘Further worry, uncertainty and delay’
The news sparked consternation across the adoption and kinship care sectors.
Adoption England, which the DfE funds to co-ordinate the work of RAAs and provide leadership to the sector, described both the delay to the confirmation of the ASGSF and the reduction in support as “disappointing”.
“Many applications will need to be reviewed and resubmitted and this will lead to further worry and uncertainty and delays for families in accessing help,” said its national adoption strategic lead, Sarah Johal.
“Many parents and carers of children who are adopted and in special guardianship arrangements are experiencing serious challenges in caring for children who have experienced loss, separation and trauma and they need access to a range of therapeutic support.”
£3,000 limit ‘inadequate for children at high risk’
Jay Vaughan, chief executive of Family Futures, a voluntary adoption agency (VAA) and therapy provider, said the decision to end both separate funding for specialist assessments and match funding of therapy was “a massive blow”.
She said: “How can you say, ‘we’ll book in dyadic developmental psychotherapy or play therapy for your child’ if you don’t know what the family is struggling with? So there has to be an assessment process. And the most complex children – the ones who are highest risk – get match funding and they are suddenly plummeted into £3,000.
“We have children new in placement who are eight – they can’t eat, they can’t sleep, they won’t allow a parent to do anything to help them, and we’re looking at £3,000?”
She said £3,000 would provide for up to 20 short therapy sessions, once accompanying tasks, such as report writing and liaison with parents and fellow professionals, had been taken into account.
Vaughan added that this was far from sufficient for children at high risk of harming themselves and others, and warned that the DfE’s approach risked many placements breaking down and children being returned to the care system.
‘Short-sighted’ decision making
While charity Adoption UK and the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA) acknowledged the economic pressures facing the country, both described the decision as “short-sighted”.
“Unresolved trauma, adopter/carer burnout and family instability do not save money – they lead to greater costs to society down the line,” said CVAA chief executive Satwinder Sandhu. “This move will also discourage prospective adopters, at a time when every effort should be made to support them in their wish to adopt a child.”
For Adoption UK, chief executive Emily Frith said: “It’s very short-sighted at a time when there are more adoptive families in crisis than ever before, and distressing news for everyone who has already faced an agonising wait to find out whether the fund will continue to exist at all.”
‘A confused and ill-considered approach to kinship support’
Kinship issued a similar message, saying today’s news was “a further blow to kinship carers, who are already experiencing ongoing disruption to their children’s therapy following the government’s delayed commitment to renewing the ASGSF earlier this month”.
While the government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes a duty on councils to publish a kinship local offer, including signposting carers to therapeutic support, “that very support is now being eroded”, said Kinship’s chief executive, Lucy Peake.
“Furthermore, it’s clear that the welcome steps taken by the government to boost awareness of the ASGSF and increase applications from eligible kinship families are not being supported by commensurate funding to provide the level of therapeutic support needed,” she added.
“This confused and ill-considered approach to the sequencing of kinship care reform risks pushing more families to breaking point.”
Timely support ‘can make crucial difference to mental health’
Family Rights Group (FRG) said it was “deeply disappointed” by the DfE’s decision to reduce the cap on ASGSF payments.
“These children have often experienced tragedy or trauma, and timely access to specialist support can make a crucial difference to their mental health and wellbeing,” said chief executive Cathy Ashley.
“Now, many families will face further uncertainty, with their applications requiring review and processing times likely to increase. This means even longer waits for children who urgently need support.”
For children’s charity Coram, which hosts the London-based RAA Coram Ambitious for Adoption, chief executive Carol Homden said: “Whilst it is welcome that there is commitment to sustaining the fund as a vital access route to help, it is disappointing to see that as more children are coming forward, their access is being further limited. This can only have further consequences for them and drive up NHS costs.”
Spending review ‘must secure long-term therapy funding’
In the DfE’s letter to stakeholders, Walker restated the government’s position that ASGSF funding beyond March 2026 was subject to upcoming spending review, which will set public expenditure limits from 2026-29.
For Adoption England, Johal said that “securing longer-term funding [for the ASGSF] must be a key priority for the government in the forthcoming spending review,” a sentiment echoed by Adoption UK.
FRG head Ashley called for “a dedicated, specialist fund that ensures all children in kinship care can access therapeutic support when they need it“, a point also made by Kinship chief executive Peake.
She warned that “further delays to improved financial, practical and emotional support for kinship families will only increase the risk of breakdown and more children entering an already overstretched care system”.
About the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund
The ASGSF is currently for children and young people up age 21 or 25 with an education, health and care plan, who:
- are living (placed) with a family in England while waiting for adoption;
- were adopted from local authority care in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland and live in England;
- were adopted from abroad and live in England with a recognised adoption status;
- were in care before a special guardianship order (SGO) was made;
- left care under a special guardianship order that was subsequently changed to an adoption order, or vice versa;
- are under a residency order or child arrangement order (CAO) and were previously looked after;
- were previously looked after but whose adoption, special guardianship, residency or CAO placement has broken down, irrespective of any reconciliation plans.
In 2023-24, 16,970 therapy applications were approved for services, along with 2,718 for specialist assessments.
Therapies funded include creative and physical therapies, family therapy, psychotherapy, parent training and therapeutic life story work.
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Calls for longer-term funding of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) may seem well-intentioned, but behind the emotional rhetoric lies a policy direction that risks entrenching inefficiencies, diverting scarce resources, and overlooking deeper structural reforms the care system urgently needs.
First, while the Fund supports thousands of children through therapies and assessments, there’s little independent evidence demonstrating long-term impact or value for money. Without rigorous outcome tracking and clear success metrics, continuing to pour millions into a system without proven effectiveness is fiscally irresponsible — especially amid intense pressure on public finances. Emotional appeals must never replace hard evidence in shaping national spending priorities.
Second, the ASGSF — though extensive in scope — is still highly exclusionary in practice. It fails to reach many of the most vulnerable children in kinship and informal care arrangements, creating a two-tier system that inadvertently penalises families based on legal definitions rather than actual need. A more equitable solution would be to rethink therapeutic support holistically across the care continuum, rather than entrenching a siloed, bureaucratic model with limited reach.
Moreover, over-reliance on therapeutic intervention risks becoming a band-aid — masking rather than addressing the deeper, systemic challenges these families face. Ashley and Peake call for dedicated funding, but financial and emotional strain in kinship families is often exacerbated by unclear legal status, patchy local authority support, and inconsistent access to housing, education and respite care. These are root issues that won’t be solved by more therapy vouchers.
Finally, positioning the ASGSF as a “key priority” in the next spending review could crowd out other essential investments — in early help services, foster care recruitment, or workforce development — which arguably deliver broader and more sustained benefits to children and families across the board.
Supporting adopted and special guardianship children is vital. But clinging to the ASGSF as the central vehicle for that support, without reform, transparency or a joined-up strategy, is not just misguided — it’s potentially harmful. We need bold, systemic solutions, not more money for more of the same.
Not good.
Try telling that to a traumatised child who can’t eat or sleep….
Explain the word metrics to the families who are on their hands and knees in despair. Go and talk to them. Ask them. They will provide you with evidence that your job spec doesn’t cover.
As someone working directly with adoptive and special guardianship families, I share your desire for bold, systemic reform but I believe we must be careful not to dismiss the current therapeutic needs of children in the name of future efficiency.
Your concerns about outcome tracking and value for money are valid robust evaluation must be part of any public funding but to suggest the ASGSF lacks value because it doesn’t fit neatly into a cost-benefit narrative risks dehumanising the very children it’s meant to support. Trauma recovery is not linear or easily measured, but I can say with certainty that timely therapeutic support has helped prevent placement breakdowns, improved school engagement, and, most importantly, allowed children to begin trusting in safety and relationships.
I also agree that the current fund excludes many children in kinship and informal arrangements this is something practitioners have been raising for years, but the solution is not to dismantle what’s already in place for some families. It’s to build on it, broaden access, and resource a coherent, needs-led framework across the whole permanency spectrum. Dismantling the ASGSF because it is imperfect only deepens the postcode lottery families already face.
Therapy alone cannot fix systemic inequalities no one is claiming it can, but it is a vital part of a trauma informed, relationship based ecosystem of support and without it, families are left holding immense complexity with no specialist help. These are not “therapy vouchers.” they are lifelines for parents and carers supporting children who flinch at touch, cannot sleep alone, or struggle with daily living due to early adversity.
We need early help, housing reform, education inclusion, and care system transformation absolutely, but we also need to stop asking families to hold trauma without trauma responsive support. The ASGSF is not the enemy of reform; it’s part of the scaffolding we must build on.
Let’s advocate for smarter, more equitable use of funding not fewer opportunities for healing.
I agree with much of what you say. However, therapy does help. I have seen it in countless families including my own. We had intensive therapy when my children joined my family. This was camhs, speciality LAC support with the head of child psychology who oversaw my girls therapy also liasing with me. Because of them, I have become a secure, confident parent of my children one of whom was dealing with intense mental health issues. She is now well adjusted. Still with deep trauma (which is forever) but with an ability to seek answers and keep developing beautifully and effectively into a Yong adult. She still needs therapy every now and then because she is facing complex issues in herself and with ADHD type symptoms her brain needs that kind of support. But this started over ten years ago, when there was a functioning LAC camhs. I would add the loss of that to your ‘systemic’ underlying problems. Camhs now is one year of crisis counselling two years after the crisis followed by referrals for ASD or ADHD. To go on another list. To not have a team you can be taken by, doesn’t work for children with an attachment disorder. My younger daughter after several crises had an intake with one counselor, assessed by another. When she finally met her therapist she had lost any hope/trust. It no longer works. If camhs was properly funded for ALL young people, with a LAC section, this would actually be a more effective and cheaper service. Than paying social workers to manage the ASF plus private therapists who do not have the long term experience CAMHS used to have in this field. But it’s all we’ve got now. So don’t stop the funds. Fix the underlying issues and you mention some important ones. But take all young people’s mental health seriously because it costs much more down the line not having a functioning CAMHS.
As an adopter, I think anything could always be improved. However you need to develop a better system before you reduce the funding from the existing system. This funding is keeping many families from going into crisis or stopping placements from breaking down. Also the mental health of adopters is not really considered at all. As an adopter of nearly 9 years it is difficult to put into words the challenges I have faced and the levels of ignorance I have found from so many professionals regarding developmental trauma. It has had huge repercussions for myself and my family and my own mental health over the years. Any professionals reading this please read about developmental trauma if you are working with adopted or fostered children and listen, listen, listen to parents.
Therapy is not a bandaid, it is vital treatment for those children who have suffered significant abuse to the degree that they have been separated from their birth adults. What will happen to the teenagers and parents I support (suffering secondary trauma) who are desperate and contemplating suicide (two – an adult and a teenager have tried)? There is nothing that nhs mental health services can offer (adult on w/l for group zoom cbt). In the light of fund reduction, I am preparing myself for family breakdowns and suicides. Do you realise how much placements cost if children need to be moved? That is the least of it. The psychological cost to the families is immeasurable. There is no adequate way to measure the therapeutic impact so far, other than to state that I find it remarkable that several families whom I support are still families, rather than fragmented breakdowns. Please stop the rhetoric about stemming dependency. These families need help. They need help now. They need intense and long-term support. You can not undo early years of abuse and trauma with a few therapy sessions. Would you trust anyone after experiencing abuse and neglect at the hands of those charged with providing loving care. It takes a long and patient time to unlearn what one has learned, especially if learned in order to survive the next five minutes.