1. East Midlands Adoption Consortium
Annual Conference 2015
Building Effective Support
Sally Donovan
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2. • Author of No Matter What and The Unofficial
Guide to Adoptive Parenting
• Contributor to Community Care Magazine
• Member of the DfE Expert Advisory Group for
Adoption Support
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3. No Matter What – the Sequel
• Our child will not wash
• Our child will not eat
• Our child will not go to bed
• Our child is being excluded from school
• Our child verbally abuses us
• Our child steals from us
• Our child smashes things up
• We have little support
• We are on the verge of a tragedy
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4. Stepping back from the brink
• Excellent, responsive, empathic front line
Social Worker
• Honest advice – don’t waste energy fighting
with CAMHS, find your own respite, fund your
own support ….
• Self-funded therapeutic intervention
• Four day, small group training in therapeutic
parenting
• Change of leadership at school
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5. Our Longer Term Solution
• Not to involve any professional who doesn’t ‘get’
trauma incl NHS, Ed Psych
• Work in partnership with school
• Take control of and fund our own training
• Give up regular employment
• Pay for therapeutic help when we need it
• Acceptance
• Self care
• Building peer support network
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7. Role on the Expert Advisory Group
• Gather and communicate views and
experiences of adoptive families
• Bring my own experience
• Test the design of the Adoption Support Fund
against a wide range of situations and
experiences
• Ask difficult questions
• Continue to push for improvement
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8. The support adopters would like
• Post adoption support to be seen as the norm
and a right
• Named and competent social worker – frontline
support, able to hear the hard stuff hold a family
through crisis, non judgemental, practical advice,
signposting
• Access to regular, free, small group training and
‘supervision’
• Training in specific issues eg social media, life
story work, education
• Choice of therapeutic providers
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9. The support adopters would like
• Local multi-disciplinary governing boards
including user-representatives
• Effective crisis intervention
• Integrated therapeutic approaches in school,
access to Virtual Heads and use of Education
Plans for adopted children
• ‘Ombudsman’ to challenge poor practice and
advocate on behalf of parents
• Honesty about the likely challenges that lie ahead
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10. Challenges of Improving Therapeutic Support
• Regional variation in quality of PAS
• Regional variation in CAMHS provision
• Lack of providers
• Lack of an evidence base
• Lack of professional awareness around the
needs of adopted children and their families
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11. Challenges of Improving Therapeutic Support
• Distance between adoptive families and local
decision-makers
• Lack of mediation between authorities and
families – defensive practice, perverse
incentives
• Risk that additional funding is swallowed up or
props up existing failures
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12. Adoption Support Fund
• Additive
• Disruptive
• Efficient
• Designed to protect and encourage existing
good practice
• Involves families in decision-making
• Accountable to taxpayers
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13. Prototype
• Launched June 2014
• 10 Local Authorities
• 209 applications, 191 approved, average
£7,138 per application to mid-March 2015
• DDP, play therapy, family therapy
• Positive feedback from families
• Lots of learning to inform national roll-out
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14. National Adoption Support Fund
• Launched 1 May 2015
• Funding in place 2015/16
• Evidence and feedback will be
collected
• Adjustments and learning ongoing
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15. LA
assessment
of support
needs
Family and
LA agree
provider of
support
Adoption
Support
Fund
Local
Authority
Application by LA
to ASF
External
provider of
support
(Inc.
CAMHS) funds
Provide support
to adopters
funds
Adoption Support Fund
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16. The ASF will pay for:
• Sensory integration therapy
• Multisystemic therapy
• Filial therapy
• Psychotherapy
• Theraplay
• Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
• Creative therapies e.g. art, music, drama, play
• Specialist clinical assessments where required (e.g. Foetal Alcohol Spectrum
Disorder)
• CAMHS assessment, multidisciplinary assessment including education and heath,
cognitive and neuropsychological assessment, other mental health needs
assessment.
• Therapeutic parenting training
• Extensive therapeutic life story work
• Respite care (where it is part of a therapeutic intervention)
OFSTED REGULATED PROVIDERS
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17. The ASF applies:
• Post order, although applications can be made
and approved pre-order
• Up to and including age 18, or 25 where there
is a Statement of Special Educational Needs or
an Education Health & Care Plan
• To children adopted from care in England, or
adopted from Wales and living in England
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18. Expert Advisory Group Mk 2
• Looking at all aspects of post adoption
support including education, health and social
services
• Adopters, adoptee, representatives from
charities, LAs, academics
• Will address wider issues – CAMHS, evidence
base, CPV, kinship care, 3 year rule,
representation, as well as monitoring and
building on ASF
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19. Peer support can offer
• Emotional support
• Practical suggestions
• Information sharing
BUT should not be seen as a cheap alternative
to professional, therapeutic support
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20. Peer Support
Social Media
Twitter, Facebook
Blogging
theadoptionsocial.com
@sallydwrites
User-Led Groups
thepotatogroup.org.uk
wearefamily.wordpress.com
The Open Nest
Online Forums
Adoption UK
Adopterssupportuk.freeforums.net
Mumsnet
Netmums
Support Groups
LA or VAA led
AUK
We Are Family
‘Organic’ groups
Mentoring and Buddying
‘Organic’
Adoption UK
Cornerstone
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