To consider a report setting out the remit of the Adoption Support Fund and how the Council is making use of it.

The Panel considered a report which set out the remit for the Adoption Support Fund and explained how the Council was making use of the Fund.  The meeting noted that the Fund was provided through the Department for Education to extend adoptive families access to therapy.  Following the assessment of a family’s needs a council could apply to the Adoption Support Fund for funding.  Each application was considered on a case by case basis.  If the funding was approved then the therapy could be provided by a council’s adoption support service, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), other public sector services or by an independent sector provider.  The meeting noted that on 1 May 2015 the sum of £19.3m was made available nationally to fund the first year.

The Panel noted that the Fund arose out of recognition that many adopted children had experienced difficult and traumatic care before being placed for adoption.  This could prevent them from settling into their new home and could create difficulties at particular stages such as adolescence.  The aim of the therapy provided through the Fund therefore was to achieve positive outcomes for the child and adoptive family.

Members also noted that, as of 30 November 2015, Central Bedfordshire Council was offering intensive adoption support to seventeen families with a total of twenty children.  Six of these families had been identified as requiring a therapeutic service or assessment and applications to the Fund had been completed and agreed.  These families were currently receiving therapeutic services from external providers from the independent sector.  A further four families had been assessed as requiring a therapeutic intervention and applications to the Fund were in the process of being completed.

In response to a question by the Chairman the Head of Corporate Parenting stated that, before the Adoption Support Fund was introduced, funding for such care had to be found by individual local authorities.  The Assistant Director Children’s Services Operations added that it was unusual for the government to fund individual care packages but the Fund, together with the forthcoming regionalisation of the adoption service to improve efficiency, formed part of the government’s national strategy to encourage adoption.  The Assistant Director Children’s Services Operations explained that the government favoured greater emphasis on a family environment and a belief in the primacy of adoption as a means of achieving this for children in the care system.  He added that a report on the impact of the government’s policies, including the changes to the family court system, would be submitted to the Panel.

The Director of Children’s Services stated that the provision of the Adoption Support Fund for those involved in the adoption process had raised expectations considerably but if it were to be withdrawn then it generate a significant budgetary pressure.

In response to a Member’s query the Adoption Practice Manager stated that the government had made the sum of £10m available for the Fund’s second year.

NOTED

the report on the remit of the Adoption Support Fund and how Central Bedfordshire Council was making use of it.

RESOLVED

That a report on the impact of the government’s policies towards the adoption process, including the changes to the family court system, be submitted to the Panel.