Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)

My Lords, in speaking to these amendments, I declare that I am a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Permanence, alongside Rachael Maskell, the MP for York. In 2019, the APPG carried out an inquiry into the fund. I will simply read its recommendation 6, which is headed “Continuity”: “The department should ensure a continuity of therapeutic support by removing the current annual application requirement, enabling agencies and authorities to apply for support that orients around the needs of children and their families”— not necessarily the budgeting needs of the department in question. I know, from carrying out that inquiry and subsequent work that I have been involved in—I am a governor of Coram, the children’s charity, which has a large say in adoption—that the experience of families that have been fortunate enough to access the support given by the fund is that it is literally transformative, albeit in many cases, when the therapeutic support is accessed, there is already a situation within the family where adoption breakdown is potentially a reality. Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in the level of adoption breakdown. If one looks at the amount of effort, time and emotional expense involved in going through an adoption, one will find it difficult to imagine having, in the end, to admit that it has not worked but has failed—which is devastating both for the adoptive family and for the child or the children. This fund genuinely does make a difference. One of the achievements of His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition when they were in government was getting it on to the statute book. One of the problems with it is that continuity of support is fundamental; this is not the sort of support that responds well to being stop-start. Unfortunately, because the flow of funding has not been consistent and because, for whatever reason—perhaps through negotiations with the Treasury—the department has been unable to be assured enough of the funding, that makes it extraordinarily difficult for the department to say to the families that are currently getting or wish to get support that it will be available. It makes the livelihoods of those practitioners providing this therapeutic support very difficult. This support is highly specialised because, in many cases, these children have been, and are, subject to really quite severe trauma. To be able to give the level of care required at the rate required, those professionals need consistency of funding from the Government, to enable them to stay in business and to be able to engage with a family on the basis that they will be able to provide sufficient support, over whatever time required for it to be effective, and to really make a difference. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will look at this carefully.