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Loading …The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) has opened for applications in 2025-26 amid significant concerns about children and families going without the therapy they need.
Children’s minister Janet Daby only confirmed that the ASGSF would continue for 2025-26 on 1 April, the start of the financial year, leading to the build-up of a huge backlog of applications and delaying the start or resumption of therapy for many care experienced children in adoptive or kinship placements.
This was then exacerbated by the news that the government had reduced maximum annual payments under the fund, from £5,000 to £3,000, and ended the match-funding of therapy by the ASGSF above this limit for packages costing up to £30,000. In addition, it emerged that the Department for Education (DfE) had ditched the separate £2,500 allowance for specialist assessments, meaning these now have to be funded from within the £3,000 therapy limit.
As a result, regional adoption agencies and councils will need to revise and resubmit many applications to fit the new limit, while sector bodies warned that children and families with the highest and most complex needs would go without the therapy they needed, and urged the DfE to reconsider the decision.
However, in a written ministerial statement issued this week, Daby confirmed the new limits, which she said reflected “a challenging fiscal climate” and high and increasing levels of demand for the ASGSF
Retrospective applications for therapy permitted
The DfE guidance on applying for the fund has also been updated to confirm this, but the department has made changes two further changes to the process that reflect the delay in confirming the fund’s continuation, the changes to the funding limits and the application backlog.
Firstly, councils and RAAs will be able to make an application for ASGSF funding within four months of assessing a family’s support needs, up from the previous three-month limit.
And secondly, until the end of June 2025, the DfE will permit retrospective applications for therapy that started on or after 1 April, so long as all of the following conditions are met:
- the application is made no longer than four weeks after the start date of the therapy;
- the reason the therapy started was to avoid a break in therapy or to prevent placement breakdown;
- the application was delayed because of the delayed opening of ASGSF or the application needed to be amended because of the changed criteria
As reported previously, applications will only, currently, be considered for therapy provided up to the end of March 2026, while the government considers whether to continue the fund beyond this date, a decision subject to its current spending review. This is due to report in June.
The eligibility criteria for accessing the fund has not changed, despite calls for it to be extended to kinship families supporting children not previously in care. Funding remains available to children aged up to 21 – or to 25, if they have an education, health and care plan – who:
- are living with a family in England while waiting for adoption;
- were adopted from local authority care in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland and live in England;
- were adopted from abroad and live in England with a recognised adoption status;
- were in care before a special guardianship order (SGO) was made;
- left care under an SGO that was subsequently changed to an adoption order, or vice versa;
- are under a residency order or child arrangement order (CAO) and were previously looked after;
- were previously looked after but where the adoption, special guardianship, residency or CAO placement has broken down, irrespective of any reconciliation plans.
