The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (Tact) expressed concerns today over the implementation of the government’s Adoption Support Fund, following David Cameron’s announcement on Monday of a further £19m investment. 

The Fund is intended to help councils provide therapeutic support for adopted children and their families and comes as part of Cameron’s bid to strengthen family life in Britain.

It was established by the government in 2013 but the latest injection of funding will significantly scale up the programme.

Amanda Cumberland, policy and parliamentary adviser for Tact, said: “We support the government's proposals and the Adoption Support Fund has the potential to make a positive difference for adoptive families but significant detail is still missing.

“In particular, Tact has concerns about the level of involvement of voluntary adoption agencies in the assessment process, whether there is enough provision in the market to meet the therapeutic needs of adopted children, and to what extent the centralised funding will continue in future years.”

The Adoption Support Fund currently requires local authorities to conduct an assessment of an individual child’s needs before applying for money towards therapeutic services.

“Our concern is for adopters who adopt through a voluntary agency like Tact,” said Cumberland. “What we would like to see is a mechanism in the Fund so that the social workers who have worked with prospective adopters have a way of feeding into the assessment process and the application to the Adoption Support Fund - simply put, because they know the family the best,” she said.

Tact also questioned whether the funds would filter through to the services provided by voluntary adoption agencies in place of NHS shortfalls.

“If you look at the picture of child and adolescent health services across the country, there’s certainly a shortfall in NHS provisions of mental health services and therapeutic services,” said Cumberland.

“As an agency, Tact has implemented some additional therapeutic support for our adoptive families... So whether the fund means that outside providers can start developing more services and be confident that they will get the referrals to fund that, I think that’s an open question that we would have to wait and see.”

The £19m funding for the Adoption Support Fund is currently set to run through to 2016.

“[The government] said that they want to look at models of how the fund will continue to be funded,” said Cumberland. “The ongoing funding is unclear. It is not clear where the money for this centralised support fund will actually come from so we would certainly like the government to be making that a bit clearer,” she said.