02/07/2025
STATEMENT FROM ACTION AGAINST ASGSF CHANGES. PLEASE SHARE!
In our next video (which will follow this post) we see Annie in the impossible position so many adoptive and kinship parents/carers now find themselves in. Do we have our children assessed and not treated or treated blind? Neither is ethical but it is where we find ourselves. Children will be harmed as a result.
Families and therapeutic providers should never have been put in this position. The government and adoption England are failing us.
We may have been a little quieter publicly and we are sorry if any of you were left feeling that you were fighting for your children’s needs on your own. We are still here. We have been extremely busy working on the campaign behind the scenes. There is much work to do. This will involve you all and announcements are coming.
In the meantime, let us say this unequivocally:
Our campaign believes wholeheartedly that our children need and deserve access to the right level of specialist therapy at the right time.
For many of our families therapists are the only other group of people that truly understand our children’s needs.
A call was put out to specialist therapy providers nearly 11 years ago. The government created the ASGSF and asked providers to expand their services to treat our children. Providers answered that call, not out of a desire to make money as some continue to say loudly and without evidence but out of a desire to help one of the most vulnerable groups of children in the country. They are highly trained and highly skilled professionals.
Many providers have carried out a huge volume of unpaid work to ensure our families needs were met even before the huge cuts to the ASGSF. The Fair Access Limit (FAL) is something providers have tried hard to work with, many have had to cut packages down to make them work within the FAL. Many have then carried out free work on top because they want to help our children. The FAL has not increased in the decade since it has been brought in. There are also a group of children for whom the FAL is not enough, where do they turn now? How will their needs be met?
Whole treatment options have been taken away with the reduction of the FAL to £3,000. The impact on families is widespread.
Without warning, without communication and without consideration many providers now find themselves in unviable positions. Why are the very therapists that have been treating our children for over a decade (many for multiple decades) not being consulted on their needs moving forwards? They understand our children’s needs. Where are the voices of children and families in these consultations that have started?
If we do not act, this absolutely vital resource for our children could be hugely reduced or lost. It will set post adoption and kinship support back decades. It is wrong and desperately short sighted.
We have heard people suggest that our campaign is a shilling exercise for providers. It isn’t. We are an independent group of parents and we are not affiliated with any organisation.
Do we believe in specialist therapy? Absolutely.
Do we believe specialist therapists hold huge importance in our children’s chances to heal from early life trauma and maximise our children’s potential? YES.
Are we grateful to therapeutic providers for all they do? From the bottom of our hearts, YES.
Fighting for our children’s right to have access to the right level of specialist therapy at the right time involves fighting for these organisations. Because if they go, we can fight all we like but who will our children see?
Is there a place for peer to peer support? YES
Is there a place for improved skill sets for social workers? YES
Will endless parent courses heal our children? NO
Do these things replace the need for specialist interventions? NO
Do they compliment access to the right specialist therapy at the right time? YES
There are many undercurrents of parent blaming in documents being released. There is also much talk of prevention, but this must be clarified. The trauma has already occurred, this is a fact that cannot be ignored.
Our children are complex, the solutions are complex. The solutions aren’t cheap but getting the support wrong is far more costly in so many ways.
