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<p> </p><p>The Government is committed to improving support for adoptive families
and foster carers. To improve adoption support, the Department for Education has committed
£19.3 million to establish an Adoption Support Fund to make therapeutic support more
accessible. This is currently being tested in 10 local authorities. We are piloting
personal budgets for adoption support in these local authorities to give parents more
choice and control over the support they receive. We have commissioned the British
Association of Adoption and Fostering to develop a new tool for assessing families’
support needs. We are supporting local authorities to pilot AdOpt, a therapeutic parenting
programme for adopters.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>We have extended the Pupil Premium,
priority school admissions and funded early education for 2-year-olds to children
adopted from care. In addition, we have published the Adoption Passport, setting out
information about entitlements to support, including adopters’ rights to improved
adoption pay and leave from 2015.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>We are continuing
to fund the Independent Review Mechanism (IRM). The IRM provides access to an independent
body where services have decided not to approve an adopter or foster carer; are proposing
changes to or have terminated a foster carer’s approval.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>To
improve support for foster carers, the department has taken the decision to continue
to fund Fosterline which provides confidential, free advice to foster carers. We are
funding the development of a new programme for foster carers of babies and very young
children and an adaptation of Multisystemic Therapy, an existing evidence based intervention,
which will focus on supporting children to return home or find stability in long term
care.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>We continue to support the roll-out of evidence
based interventions such as KEEP (Keeping Foster and Kinship Carers Safe and Supported)
and MTFC (Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care) to help foster carers gain the confidence
and skills to care for those with complex needs.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The
department has recently become the government’s first foster-family-friendly employer,
giving staff that foster extra support to balance their work and care responsibilities.
Other government departments and some local authorities are now actively considering
implementing similar policies.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>We have developed training
materials for professionals working in fostering and adoption and delivered regional
train-the-trainer events to launch them. Some fostering services plan to offer this
training to their foster carers too.</p><p> </p>
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