Adoptive families as well as mental health professionals are becoming very concerned. This anxiety comes on the heels of significant cuts to Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF). The £50 million Adoption Support Fund, which was used to pay for specialist therapeutic assessments, and therapy for adopted children has been slashed. Considering this reduction, one cannot help but fear that adoptions will soon begin to unravel as a result.
Similar to last year, the ASGSF enabled each eligible child of receiving funding of up to £2,500 for specialist assessments. They paid an additional £5,000 to fund therapy. The government has scrapped funding for specialist assessments altogether. Secondly, they have reduced the therapy cap by 40%, down to £3,000 per year. Unexpectedly, these changes have sent stakeholders in a tizzy. Families especially rely heavily on this assistance to keep their households afloat.
Last year, the ASGSF covered the tuition of nearly 20,000 children. That would be a big jump from the 13,000 children who used the fund in 2019. However, such reductions in support threaten to undermine the very therapeutic relationships that many of these adopted children have built over the years. Therapist Sarah Clarke emphasized the importance of these long-term connections, stating that “what they need is a therapeutic relationship that is built over a number of years.”
Clarke further noted that the cuts would be detrimental to many families: “It’s equivalent to asking a GP to either take a 40 percent pay cut or see twice as many patients.” She cautioned that cutting back on therapy would be a “devastating impact” on families. In reality, a lot of adopted kids require long-term mental health help to support them in regulating their emotions and behaviors. Without accessible therapy, many will face mighty obstacles.
Those fears were echoed by Euan Preston, a professional who often works with adoptive parents. He stated, “I regularly speak with parents who worry that they cannot continue and the young person will have to leave the family home because of safety.” The emotional toll on these families is tremendous, with many living in constant fear of losing access to therapeutic support that they can’t afford to lose.
Caroline, an adoptive parent, shared her fear about the proposed cuts. “The thought of not having that lifeline was just horrendous,” she said. She described how her child has begun to express emotions more healthily through therapy: “Now sometimes he will cry, which sounds awful, but it means he’s more in tune with his emotions and that it’s OK to be sad and he doesn’t have to be angry.” She highlighted the challenges they face, saying, “I don’t ever want him to not be in this family, because he is this family, but neither can we live with him smashing the house up all the time or attacking us.”
Further Liberal Democrat MP Tom Gordon responded to the cuts by calling them “morally abhorrent” funding cuts. Without the right support, he cautioned, adoption placements would fail. This might, in turn, have further financial implications for municipalities. “If adoptions do break down it will cost local authorities hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not more,” he remarked.
And families are already bracing for the impacts that are about to be inflicted by these funding cliffs. In the meantime, the need to re-evaluate the ASGSF and its important purpose in helping more adoptive families grows. The future of mental health support hangs in the balance. Advocates are calling on lawmakers to reconsider the consequences of these cuts before they’ve set in stone irreparable harm to their most vulnerable families.
