Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund

Debate between Munira Wilson and Janet Daby

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on whether the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund will continue.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)]

I welcome the opportunity to respond to this urgent question. The adoption and special guardianship support fund has for many years provided valuable therapeutic support to adopted children and special guardianship children who were previously in care.

I very much recognise that funding over that period has supported many children and families and helped them towards a stable family life. I have in recent weeks heard many more stories of how important the adoption and special guardianship support fund has been to many, and I pay tribute to the Members from all parts of the House who have been advocates and champions for adopted children and children in special guardianship placements in their constituencies.

I very much appreciate that the delay in confirming the continuation of this fund has been a very difficult time for many. I am especially concerned about children and families, because many of those whom the adoption and special guardianship support fund supports are in great need of continued help.

I also recognise that there has been an impact on providers of therapy, who have not been able to plan and prepare for the year ahead in the way they would have liked. However, the Department has been clear with local authorities and regional adoption agencies about transitional funding arrangements, which means that therapy that started in the last financial year can continue into 2025-26, even ahead of full 2025-26 budget announcements.

Appropriate transitional funding has been agreed for a significant number of children. I regret the delay in making this announcement, but I am happy to confirm today that £50 million has been allocated for the adoption and special guardianship support fund this year. We will be announcing further details to the House in the coming days and opening applications to families and children across our country as soon as we can.

[Munira Wilson]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting this urgent question; I thank you especially on behalf of the thousands of vulnerable children, their adoptive parents and kinship carers who rely on the adoption and special guardianship support fund. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care and co-chair of the APPG on children.

I welcome the Minister’s announcement, which none of us were expecting, because many Members on all sides of the Chamber have spent the last few months asking question after question only to be being batted away time after time and told that answers would be forthcoming. This vital fund is there to help the most vulnerable children who have experienced the deepest trauma. Those who have been looking to renew applications for this coming financial year, like the constituent I mentioned in my question to the Prime Minister last week, have been left hanging in limbo. While I am grateful for today’s announcement, has the Minister considered what impact there has been on those families?

In the case I mentioned of my constituent Sarah, she said that her daughter has started to regress in the period between finishing her last lot of therapy and being able to secure the next lot of therapy. Another woman contacted me to tell me that she is special guardian for a child who at the age of just two witnessed her mother being murdered by her father, and she has been unable to access the right level of support.

The Minister mentioned the impact on providers. The Purple Elephant Project in my constituency of Twickenham is desperately fundraising to continue providing support, while others are taking their support elsewhere. Therefore, there are concerns about whether there will be sufficient provision. While I am grateful for the announcement, can the Minister confirm how long the £50 million will last, and whether Ministers are considering expanding the eligibility criteria for the support fund to include all kinship carers, not just special guardians? It is the least we can do for these most vulnerable children.

[Janet Daby]

I thank the hon. Member for her points. I very much appreciate the concern caused by the delay in this announcement, and I recognise the potential impact on children and families, as well as local authorities, regional adoption agencies and providers of therapy. Under the Adoption and Children Act 2002, there is a statutory duty for local authorities to have support services in place for adopted children. The Government very much support that. To her questions about kinship carers, the plan is for the support fund to open to kinship carers as well, and that £50 million is for the year. Further information will be provided shortly about those arrangements.

Qualifications Reform Review

Debate between Munira Wilson and Janet Daby

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement. In the years since the Conservatives’ first botched moves towards prematurely scrapping a range of vocational qualifications, the Liberal Democrats have repeatedly warned of the consequences of that ill thought-through, counterproductive policy, so it is to be welcomed that the Government have heard our and the sector’s concerns. The announcement is a welcome step forward to protect student choice and local decision making, and it is a more pragmatic, rather than ideological, approach. It was clear that the decision to defund was premature. T-levels, while a welcome innovation, had not had enough time to bed in to allow an informed decision, and that risked too many young people being left without appropriate options. Now the Government are providing clarity up to 2027, will the Minister lay out the processes for monitoring and reviewing the impact of those changes until then? Will she lay out the timeline for the longer-term curriculum and assessment review in greater detail?

I have one particular area of concern in the statement, and that is around early years education. Research last year showed that rather than embracing the T-level in education and early years, students overwhelmingly opted for the overlapping qualifications earmarked for defunding. Now we hear the Government will go ahead and proceed with that defunding. Given that reality, how does the announcement square with the Government’s focus and rhetoric around prioritising early years? How will the Government improve recruitment and training in that sector if it is not meeting students’ needs where they are? The point is reflective of a broader question on the announcement, which is: what are the Government’s overarching guiding principles as to which courses will be funded and which will not? The rationale laid out by the Minister suggests they are working on a case-by-case basis, but in the interests of long-term stability and clarity, should the Government not be laying out their principles for how they will approach those decisions more strategically?

Finally, as students face a welcome range of post-16 options—as we have heard, it is a confusing landscape—it is essential that they have excellent support in making those important decisions. How will the Government ensure that all students have access to high-quality careers guidance?

[Janet Daby]

I thank the hon. Member for the many points she made and for acknowledging the Government’s pragmatic response. It was recognised that the previous Government were not focused on social care and childcare, so we needed to relook at those areas and ensure that level 3 and level 2 placements were available. She will be aware that we are conducting the curriculum and assessment review, and the qualifications reform will be connected to the wider review, which will be published next year. There are various other ways that qualifications reform is being monitored in terms of the national audit. We are reviewing the process on an ongoing basis. As well as seeing where the uptake is from students—this is where Skills England will come into play—we are looking at ensuring that organisations and employers are involved in the types of training and courses available for young people, so the connection is very much there. We will follow through with more detail in due course.