Adoption, Special Guardianship and Kinship Care

Beacon House offers a specialist national service for children who are adopted, or who are cared for under a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) or Kinship Care. We are rated OUTSTANDING by Ofsted as an Adoption Support Agency which reflects how passionate we are about working with families who have come together through adoption and kinship care.

We recognise and honour the strength and commitment of adoptive and kinship carers, and we take time to understand the complexity, the emotional roller coaster, the resilience and the love that often defines family life.  We are committed to listening deeply to our family’s voices with openness and curiosity.

We believe that:

• Healing happens in relationships
• Families can thrive when they feel safe, seen, understood and supported
• Therapeutic work must be collaborative, inclusive, realistic and hopeful
• Trauma does not have to define the future – it can also be an opportunity for extraordinary growth, healing and love

The ASGSF is a government grant that funds assessment and therapy for children in England who are adopted, cared for under a special guardianship or kinship care. Each young person eligible for the ASGSF is able to access £3000 per financial year, either for a specialist assessment (up to £2,500 of the £3000) or for therapeutic support.

To find out which families are eligible to access the ASGSF, please click here. We also accept referrals from families who are able to self-fund, and from Local Authorities who are not able to access the ASGSF.

Our goals reflect our belief that every family deserves compassionate, trauma-responsive and identity-affirming support.  We aim to:

1. Deeply understand the family’s story, strengths and challenges,
2. Make sense of what might be happening beneath behaviours
3. Work alongside children, young people and families to explore what they need to feel safe, understood and connected
4. Recommend direct bespoke therapeutic support plans (offered by Beacon House or the child/young adult’s local services) focused on healing the impact of trauma, sensitive to other factors such as neurodiversity and reducing outside stressors.
5. Build stronger, more trauma-responsive systems of care and support around the family, to reduce where possible, the barriers to recovery and post-traumatic growth.

We receive referrals for assessment from across the UK, and referrals for therapy from Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire. All referrals for ASGSF funding need to be made by a social worker in your local SGO or Kinship care team, or your local Regional Adoption Agency. Once we receive a referral, we will:

• Look at the support needs assessment provided to us by your social worker
• Offer you an introductory telephone call to explain what you can expect, and ask for some more information
• Send your referring team an estimate of costs for them to submit to the ASGSF
• Begin work with you once the ASGSF has approved the application

For families who are able to self-fund, simply get in touch with us directly and we will share with you the next steps.