Therapeutic support for kinship families

Current status

The Adoption Support Fund was renamed as the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) in December 2023 following publication of the National Kinship Care Strategy, with the stated intention to increase applications from eligible kinship families (i.e. those where the child was previously looked after and is cared for under a special guardianship or child arrangements order).

The most recent figures on ASGSF applications, published in September 2024, show that applications from kinship families are increasing but remain considerably lower than for adoptive families. Special guardianship applications represented 17% of all applications in 2023-24 despite more children leaving care to special guardianship than adoption each year since 2019. Just 46 applications from eligible families with child arrangements orders were made in the previous two years. 

No changes to scope or eligibility of the Fund are currently in progress, nor is the status of the Fund known beyond March 2025. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill introduced in Parliament in December 2024 includes no further provisions for improving therapeutic support for children in kinship care.

The National Kinship Care Strategy also included a commitment by the Department for Education to commission new research to explore applications and therapies provided as part of the Fund to see how it is used (or not) by kinship families, with a view to informing further development. The status of this is unknown.

Our verdict

The renaming of the now Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund was a step in the right direction, but oddly continued to omit families where a previously looked after child is being cared for under a child arrangements order despite this group having also been eligible since April 2022.

Renaming the Fund in isolation also represents a misdiagnosis of why eligible kinship families are not applying to or accessing therapeutic support through the Fund. As explored in more detail in our Forgotten report (where we found that only 1 in 7 eligible kinship carers had accessed support via the ASGSF), many kinship carers highlight that social workers themselves aren’t confident in nor have the time to submit an application, and even when an assessment is carried out and some support offered, agreed providers often don’t have the knowledge and understanding of kinship care to deliver support tailored to the unique needs and circumstances of kinship families. As such, we welcome further research into applications and use of the Fund by kinship families.

Our findings are reflected to in recent evaluation of the Adoption Support Fund which found that both awareness levels and the extent to which the Fund was seen to have positively helped carers and their children were lower amongst special guardians than for adoptive parents. The Review of the Adoption Support Fund COVID-19 Scheme also suggested that “SGO families may need a different approach, particularly to marketing support for them”.

Ultimately, the Adoption Support Fund is designed with adoptive families in mind. A rebranding exercise alone risks setting up more kinship families to fail if they learn about the Fund, but soon find their local authority unaware, unwilling or unable to help secure appropriate therapeutic support.

What should happen next

The UK Government and local authorities should ensure all kinship families can access appropriate long-term emotional and therapeutic support tailored to their unique needs and experiences. This is vital given the urgent need to improve the support offered to kinship families to manage children’s social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Our 2024 annual survey of kinship carers found that 13% of kinship carers worried about their ability to continue caring for their children, with nearly three quarters (72%) of those selecting managing kinship children’s social, emotional and/or mental health difficulties as a reason for this concern – the most common reason given.

This could include developing bespoke services modelled on a version of the ASGSF designed for kinship families, acknowledging the different approaches they need to adoptive families. This should be available to all kinship families regardless of the type of kinship arrangement or the child’s journey into kinship care, take a ‘whole family’ approach which recognises entire family units (including biological and step children in the kinship household), and include funding for non-therapeutic support where this would be of significant benefit to children and their kinship carers.

In the interim, to most effectively utilise the existing Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund, recording practices should ensure local authorities and Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) record the split of awarded funding between SGO/CAO and adoptive families. Research into the therapeutic support offered by the Fund to kinship families should proceed at pace to inform future delivery and development, and the Government should confirm the future of the Fund beyond March 2025. In addition, local authorities should ensure professionals working with kinship families have sufficient knowledge and capacity to support effective applications for eligible kinship families, and should ensure any delivery providers understand the specific needs and experiences of kinship families and how they differ to adoptive families.

Children looked after, including those in kinship foster care, are entitled to receive an initial health assessment on entry into local authority care; local authorities should ensure this is completed prior to any movement to a different kinship arrangement supported outside of the care system, and appropriate assessments or support should not be jeopardised by the loss of the child’s ‘looked after’ status

Specific attention should also be paid by local authorities in how to best to support contact; although enduring family relationships can be one of the best things about kinship care, contact with parents can also be experienced as challenging, uncertain and potentially damaging for children and young people growing up in kinship care.

Kinship children and their elevated prevalence of mental health difficulties should also be recognised within the new UK Government’s plans to introduce a Children’s Wellbeing Bill and to deliver specialist mental health professionals in every school and Young Futures Hubs for drop-in mental health support in communities across England.