Adoption

(asked on 1st November 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the value is of the average application for support from the Adoption Support Fund.


Answered by
Edward Timpson Portrait
Edward Timpson
This question was answered on 8th November 2016

As at 1 November 2016, 7,471 applications had been made to the Adoption Support Fund since May 2015. Evidence from families is that they have found that the support that they have received of immense benefit in a range of ways, for example, improving relationships, helping children deal with trauma, and improving education outcomes.

Following an increase in demand for support, the Government is providing an additional £2millon to the Fund in this financial year, taking the overall amount available to £23million (up from £19million in 2015-16). For the remainder of this financial year as an interim measure, a £5,000 ‘fair access limit’ has been introduced to ensure that families can continue to access support throughout this financial year.

We have worked with the Association of Directors of Children's Services to develop an approach that aims to maximise the number of families that are able to access support, whilst recognising there are exceptional cases whose needs are so great that local authorities and Government should join forces to ensure that they can access the support they need. The Fund will therefore support exceptional cases above the £5,000 limit, up to a maximum of £30,000 per child, where local authorities agree to match-fund these cases.

Next year, the ASF budget will increase to £28million and there will be further increases in each year of this Parliament. We will be consulting with the sector over the coming months to develop a sustainable operating and funding model for the Fund for the future.

Over 80% of applications to the Fund are for under £5,000 per child. Of the 7,471 applications to the fund 13,146 children have been supported, of which 1,686 children received funding equal to or greater than £5,000, this represents 13%. The average value of an application made to the ASF is £4,695.97 – please note this is average per application, many applications have multiple recipients.

The proportion of children who have received support over the £5,000 fair access limit who live in the top 20% most deprived local authority areas, and the breakdown of the number of applications approved per month since inception are set out in the attached tables.

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