5/5 But in the longer term, these families deserve properly funded statutotory services from CAMHS, Local Authorities and education. The current system is utterly broken. Children and families deserve so so much better.
4/5 We are supporting the calls to reverse all the cuts immediately, and safeguard funding for 3 years, ending the end-of-year chaos we ensure every new funding round.
3/5 You cannot slash funding, get rid of specialist assessment, punish flexibility, and destabilise services, then act surprised when the system collapses. Which it will. This doesn’t protect children. It exhausts families, drives out skilled providers, and will lead to placement breakdown
2/6
This isn’t a funding system. It’s a badly planned experiment with children’s lives, families’ stability, and providers’ survival. It’s chaotic, punitive and both clinically & financially illiterate. And it is failing the very people it claims to support.
1/5 Turns out I am not quite finished! None of this is accidental. These are policy choices, and vulnerable children & families are paying the price. If this were any other area of healthcare, it would be a national scandal.
6/6 Adoptive parents are NOT ALLOWED to pay for their own therapist unless Ofsted-registered. Parents can’t pay a Clinical Psychologist specialising in trauma and attachment if they aren't registered with a body that knows far less about traumatised children then the psychologist. Indefensible.
5/6
12 years on, we can no longer tolerate the financial risk. We cannot survive months of zero income every year because funding bodies fail to plan or have funding removed mid-case because school holidays got in the way.
Our work has always been LA-funded, but we can’t work within this chaos
4/6
New fun feature: automatic surrender of funds after six months, even when work is active, appropriate, and helping.
Why?
To punish families if services are slow?
To punish services if families are hard to pin down?
It’s punitive, time-wasting, stressful, and absurd.
3/6 Penny-pinching = ever more rigid funding forms with each £0.01 specified before we’ve met families. Core skills of good clinicians are flexibility/responsiveness. Family in crisis & multi-agency meeting urgently needed? Tough, you must apply to panel to repurpose funds. Tick-box commissioning.
2/6 Cuts were partially reversed after huge damage. But funding for specialist assessments has been scrapped, and funding has been cut by 60%. No assessment = inappropriate therapy requests for unassessed families. Why is disregard forchildren, families, and professional expertise acceptable
1/6
Notes from the coalface. ASGSF funding ended in April 2025 with zero planning or communication. The result? 3 mths with no funded applications: no income for providers and disrupted care for families. Financially disastrous for services, emotionally devastating for children and parents.
Starmer also ducks the question re the support fund for adopted children. 'As soon as possible' is a bit bloody late when the fund ends on Monday, leaving families distraught and services in chaos #asgsf @janetdaby.bsky.social @munirawilson.bsky.social
www.communitycare.co.uk/2025/03/28/s...
Utterly heartbreaking. I’m so sorry you are in this position.
It's already too late. Therapeutic support has ended, funding applications for new assessements and support are on hold, and SMEs who deliver these contracts are letting staff go as there is no work from next week. It's an absolute shitshow for everyone. Goverment by Ghosting. #asgsf #adoption
Every word of this #ASGSF
EDM re failure of Labour to protect post Adoption support or to communicate any Plan B. Families, LAs, CAMHS & charities now expecting chaos to be unleased on April 1st as existing work ends prematurely, work due to start is shelved & placements breakdown. #ASGSF
edm.parliament.uk/early-day-mo...
MPs call on government to confirm future of Adoption & Special Guardianship Support Fund as lack of clarity over vital funding beyond March causes anxiety for thousands edm.parliament.uk/early-day-mo... @jessbrownfullermp.bsky.social
When it appears that Labour are removing even more support from societies most vulnerable children than the Tories did....
@jon4highpeak.bsky.social @janetdaby.bsky.social @teamlabouruk.bsky.social
#politicallyhomeless #ASGSF
conservativepost.co.uk/thousands-of...
Hard to overstate the increasing panic in Adoption Services and the despair experienced by adoptive families, as the wall of silence about the future of the ASGSF - due to fall off a cliff IN 3 WEEKS - continues. @janetdaby.bsky.social care to enlighten us?
Any sense at all which way ASGSF decision making is heading. Tick tock, tick tock!!
I absolutely love this - it seems to me that the only to all the systemic failings and barriers put up in the way of families and people trying to get an education and some care and support is militant decency - throwing stones in to a lake make ripples that radiate- it’s the same with kindness.
STILL no update! CAMHS routinely directs adopted children to the ASGSF. Losing the fund with no capacity in CAMHS to take over the services is shocking in it's indifference to the distress of families & the chaos it will cause to NHS and LAs. @jon4highpeak.bsky.social @janetdaby.bsky.social
Thousands await the fate of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) , vital for children facing past abuse. With government funding in question, nearly 52,000 families fear losing transformative support. Learn more: www.adoptionuk.org/news/thousan...
Can you please send me the letter - as families we support are being told that we can't bid for therapy until after a decision is made, and we can't carry over unspent 2024-2025 funding for therapy that is ongoing.