Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund
Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Emma Lewell(1Â month ago)
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Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) on securing this debate.
I have seen the difference that the adoption and support grant has made locally. I visited the Purple Elephant Project, based in Whitton in my constituency, which supports over 100 children and families in Hounslow and Richmond, including many who have been adopted, are in kinship care or are currently looked-after children in foster care. It provides intense professional therapeutic support.
The Purple Elephant team gave examples of the difference it has made, sometimes after a long period of therapeutic support, to benefit those children and families. I saw the safe and welcoming space it provides and understood the difference it makes. The children it has supported have all had a traumatic start to their life through neglect or abuse, and they have great difficulty building relationships and coping with school, siblings and any social situation.
Due to the close correlation between neglect, abuse and adoption, Purple Elephant and other organisations are heavily dependent on the grant for their sustainability. When I met our kinship care group, I heard that many of them, and the children for whom they are now guardians, gain from the services that the fund supports. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) cares deeply about this issue and is personally committed, but I ask her to address the problems.
Purple Elephant told me recently that it is not out of the woods yet. It is still being impacted significantly and having to fundraise to bridge the gap in funding and ensure that therapy sessions do not stop. Let us remember that it is not just the children and families who lose out because of the uncertainty and the cuts resulting from these decisions, but the therapists themselves, who have a living to make. Most of them are freelancers. They want to work with these damaged children and do not want their whole practice to be paid for privately by families who can afford it.
There must be equality here. Purple Elephant has told me that families are anxious, stressed and disillusioned about the loss of support and worried about how they will cope if these services—
