Adoption and Kinship Care
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of trends in the levels of support requirements for families who have adopted children and families who are kinship carers.
Answered by Department for Education
Through our ‘Adoption Support that Works for All’ consultation, the department is considering evidence from adoptive and kinship families, and other stakeholders, about the support they would like to see made available.
The consultation included proposals to promote standardised needs assessments from multi-disciplinary teams. We are already funding Regional Adoption Agencies to develop multi-disciplinary teams, bringing together social care, health, and educational partners to deliver assessment and support to adopted and kinship children and families.
We currently plan to publish the government's response to the consultation later this year.
We are also assessing kinship families’ support requirements through the Kinship Zones pilot on the impact of financial allowances, assessed through independent evaluation. The National Kinship Care Ambassador has published learning in her report ‘Improving the Kinship Local Offer and Approach to Kinship Care’ and school census data collected from autumn 2026 will help improve the evidence base.
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