In April 2025 the government announced some significant changes to the Fund for April 2025-April 2026. Please scroll down this page for details, and answers to some of the questions you might have.
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The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) was set up to provide funding for therapeutic support, initially just for adopted children and now also for children with Special Guardianship or Child Arrangement Orders.
Around 80% of adopted children have suffered abuse, neglect, or violence before adoption. They also spend an average of 15 months in care, often moving through several foster families, losing everything that is familiar to them along the way. After such a traumatic early start in life, the need for lifelong support is common.
The Fund is available for children living in England up to and including the age of 21 (or 25 with a Statement of Special Educational Needs or Education Health & Care Plan) who:
Your local authority adoption support team can apply for ASGSF funding for therapeutic support for your child.
First, they will give you an assessment of your family’s adoption support needs. You can ask for this at any time after your child comes to live with you.
The local authority that places the child with you is responsible for assessing your needs for three years after the Adoption Order. After three years it becomes the responsibility of the local authority where you live (if different).
If the assessment shows that your child needs therapeutic support, the local authority will apply to the Fund on your behalf, specifying the type and length of therapy needed. The local authority social worker will talk to you about what sort of therapy your child needs, and who in your local area can provide it.
Then the funds are sent to the local authority for them to pay for the therapy needed.
Until the end of March 2026, the ASGSF will have a single fair access limit of £3,000 per child per year for therapy. Specialist assessments up to the level of £2,500 per child will be considered, but only within the overall £3,000 fair access limit.
The ASGSF will continue to offer support until 31 March 2026. Applications can also be made and processed for therapeutic interventions starting before 31 March 2026 and continuing into the 2026 to 2027 financial year. This is as part of a wider continuation of the fund into the next financial year, we are still awaiting details of this to be confirmed by Government, which was promised this autumn, as well as plans for the Fund from 2027.
The therapies funded are those identified to help with:
A: The Fund is open for applications now.
A: All applications submitted before 14th April have been returned to the social worker for them to reassess according to the new criteria, and then re-submit.
A: Any applications already approved will be honoured as agreed, using the pre-April Fair Access Limit of £5,000.
A: Specialist assessments will still be funded, but they will come out of the £3,000 limit per child.
A: The expectation is still that applications will be turned around within 25 days. However there is now a significant backlog of applications so you should probably expect a delay.
A: Normally the Fund does not fast track any applications. Many applications will be deemed urgent. However, if your social worker feels that there is a risk that the child will cause significant harm to themselves or others, there is a new temporary fast track arrangement. The application should be submitted as usual but alongside this, the service manager at your agency (or more senior lead) should send an email to [email protected] with the words ‘FAST TRACK’ and the application number in the title of the email. This arrangement will be reviewed by the Fund in the middle of May.
A: Government says you should make a funding application before therapy starts. They will only consider retrospective applications in exceptional circumstances. This includes:
They will not consider administrative and clerical errors, or delays caused by organisational restructuring, as exceptional.
A: The ASGSF has been confirmed until April 2028, and plans from April 2028 are currently under discussion, as part of the Adoption Support Consultation.