Adoption Support Fund
Yesterday, Tuesday 15 October, the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced further investment for the Adoption Support Fund, to ensure every family that needs it will be able to get therapeutic support until 2021. The commitment builds on the £130m already invested through the fund, which has benefitted over 40,000 families. This was covered by the Telegraph.
The Education Secretary also announced almost £650,000 for Regional Adoption Agencies, who will coordinate work to find more adopters across the country, especially for harder to place children such as siblings, older children and those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. This will include targeted digital work and work with black churches and mosques to increase the numbers of people from BAME communities coming forward to adopt.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said:
This government will do everything we can to help support young people into an adoptive home and we’re tapping into the expertise of the wonderful people that work in this sector. In recent years, the trend that concerns us all is the disparity between numbers of children awaiting adoption and adoptive families ready to take them. This is a trend that must change and I want to do everything I can to help you do that.
We have cut the average time between a child entering care and being placed with a family by seven months since 2012. It’s now down to 14 months. Obviously there is still substantial room for improvement. It still takes too long and not all adoptive families receive the support they need. But we’re definitely going in the right direction.
Our adoption support fund which was set up in 2015, has provided a range of therapeutic support for nearly 50,000 children who have been through traumatic times before adoption. I am delighted to announce that we are going to extend this fund through to 2021, so families can now continue to access therapy support.
More information about the Adoption Support Fund is available here.