Press Release: POTATO Group Warns DfE Adoption Support Reforms Risk Underestimating Severe Need Within Adoptive and Kinship Families
- May 11
- 1 min read
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
POTATO Group warns DfE adoption support reforms risk underestimating severe need within adoptive and kinship families.
The POTATO Group has today published its full organisational response to the Department for Education’s consultation, Adoption Support that Works for All.
The response warns that the proposals risk fundamentally underestimating the level and complexity of need within adoptive and kinship families. It draws extensively on the Group’s 2025 research report, Far, Far Beyond the Adoption Order: Lessons from Lives Impacted by Trauma, as well as the Department for Education’s own commissioned research and wider sector evidence.
Euan Preston, Chair of The POTATO Group, said:
“The evidence does not point to a population with predominantly low-level needs. It points to widespread, clinically significant and highly complex need, much of which remains badly under-served.
We are deeply concerned that the direction of reform risks replacing specialist therapeutic provision with lower-cost universal approaches that cannot safely meet the needs of many adopted and kinship children, teenagers and young adults.”
The response raises concerns about the Department’s characterisation of need, the possible dilution of specialist therapeutic support, cliff-edges in adulthood, misunderstanding of developmental trauma, and serious methodological flaws in the consultation process itself.
The full response can be read here:
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