Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what specialist support is available to adoptive parents of children with experience of trauma.

This financial year, the department has invested £50 million in the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund, giving adopted and kinship children access to therapeutic services that stabilise placements and offer specialist support to both adoptive children and parents.

The department has approved applications for nearly 14,000 children since April, for both therapy and specialist assessments.

In addition, the department is providing £3 million this year to Adoption England to develop more multidisciplinary teams in Regional Adoption Agencies. These joint teams, working with local health partners, enable families to receive holistic and high quality support.

Adoption England is also working with Adoption Support and Local Authority Children’s ‘front door services’ to develop a much more joined-up approach to how services engage with families. The aim is to agree a protocol on collaboration so that families receive a far stronger range of support.