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Family Rights Group expresses deep concern at changes to Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund
PRESS RELEASE 14/04/25
Charity expresses deep concern at changes announced today to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund
The national charity Family Rights Group has voiced deep concern at measures announced by the Department for Education today (see below) to significantly reduce the therapeutic support that will be available to individual children via the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund. To qualify to apply for help under the Fund, the child must be adopted or be raised by a kinship carer and have previously been in the care system.
Commenting on the Government’s announcement, Cathy Ashley, Chief Executive of Family Rights Group, stated:
“We are deeply disappointed by the Government’s decision to significantly reduce the cap on support available under the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund. So often, we hear from callers to our advice service and from members of our Kinship Carers’ Panel about the difficulties they face in accessing the therapeutic support that the children in their care so desperately need. 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.
The delay in confirming the Fund’s continuation meant kinship carers were left in limbo, unable to submit applications. 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. This is at a time when the wider mental health system is in crisis.
What is needed is a dedicated, specialist fund that ensures all children in kinship care can access therapeutic support when they need it. It is therefore disheartening that the Government’s proposed review of the Fund’s future fails to consider widening eligibility or addressing the urgent unmet needs of these children and families.”
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Notes
About Family Rights Group
Family Rights Group is the leading national charity working to ensure the child welfare system supports children to live safely and thrive within their family. We also work to strengthen the family and community networks of those children who cannot live at home.
- Our free specialist advice service supports parents and kinship carers in England, helping them to understand their rights and options.
- We pioneer innovative child welfare practices including family group conferences.
- We set up the Kinship Care Alliance and co-led the first ever Parliamentary Taskforce on Kinship Care. We now service the All Party Parliamentary Group on Kinship Care
- For 50 years, our legal, policy and campaigning work has influenced developments in the child welfare system. For example, we secured important changes for kinship families including an exemption from the two-child tax credit rule and a 2023 extension to legal aid for some prospective kinship carers.
Announcement on 14/4/25 from the Department for Education
“As announced on 1 April, the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) will be continuing from April 2025, with a budget of £50m.
We appreciate the importance of ASGSF funding to many children and young people, as part of the wider support which local areas provide to adoptive and kinship families. However, demand for support from the ASGSF continues to grow significantly.
In 2025-26, in order to maximise the number of children who are able to access this fund, we have had to make the difficult decision to set the overall Fair Access Limit (FAL) at £3,000.
We will no longer have a separate FAL for specialist assessments. However, specialist assessments up to the level of £2,500 will be considered for funding, but only within the overall FAL of £3,000. We will no longer be able to offer match funding applications for therapy which costs more than the £3,000 FAL, or for specialist assessments which cost more than £2,500.
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. The Adoption and Special Guardianship Fund will still enable those eligible to access a significant package of therapeutic support, tailored to meet their individual needs.
Applications prepared in advance of these changes which exceed the new restrictions may therefore need to be amended before submission. Any applications already submitted will be returned for review.
For this initial period, we regret that the applications portal will not automatically calculate using the new restrictions, so the changes will need to be managed manually until further notice.
We will honour applications already approved, where these have continued from 2024-25 to 2025-26 under transitional funding arrangements. However, please note that those transitional funding arrangements are now closed, and no more approvals can be given.
Finally, we recognise the importance of ongoing clarity and stability in the provision of this important support to vulnerable children. We will be discussing further the best approach to the management of funds in future years. Future funding will of course be subject to Spending Review decisions. As a result, we will, for the time being, only be able to consider applications where the therapy or specialist assessment will be fully completed before the end of March 2026. We will make a further announcement in due course about the plans for the ASGSF from April 2026.”
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