It feels extraordinary to me in April 2023, to be looking back on 25 years of Family Futures. It seems like only yesterday we were sitting around Alan Burnell, our co-founder’s kitchen table in March 1998, wondering what to call ourselves and how to set ourselves up. At that time, nothing like this existed in the UK and adopters and their families were being failed by the total lack of support available.

Now the picture is very different and we are pleased to see more support and understanding of developmental trauma around the UK and acknowledgement by the government by putting the Adoption Support Fund in place that therapy and support is essential for adoptive and SGO families.

Family Futures has gone from a part-time team of three with an answering machine to a multidisciplinary therapy and admin team of more than 30 staff! We not only have our assessment and therapy service but our permanency service, our training and consultation service, and most recently our Wellbeing Hub. This was unimaginable in April 1998 when we set ourselves up as a limited company.

We’ve come a long way in the past 25 years and are proud to be a Community Interest Company that is registered as not for profit. We also no longer just work with adopted children but with fostered and special guardianship children around the UK too. Our new Wellbeing Hub further extends our therapy service so that any parent looking for therapeutic support for their child or young person can speak to one of our therapists and set up a short-term programme of therapy to meet their needs.

As you are all aware, the world has gone through some difficult times in the last three years and everyone has been under considerable pressure to change in ways that we would never have thought possible before. So I am very proud that Family Futures is still standing 25 years on and still offering a service of excellence to children/young people and their families.

To mark our 25th year anniversary we are holding a Family Futures conference on 20th October, Contact in Context. We have just opened bookings and hope you will be able to join us online to discuss best practice and how we can all support young people to maintain important relationships, so vital to their sense of identity and wellbeing. Thank you to all who have registered interest in the event. Voices of adopted people, adoptive parents/special guardians and birth parents are going to be front and centre in our keynote speech and round table discussions, and you can find out more about our plans on our conference page and social media.

Contact has always been a vital part of any therapeutic programme at Family Futures and an integral part of therapeutic life story work. We believe that supporting children who are care-experienced means supporting the whole system around them including the birth family network. We believe that contact needs to be facilitated for all parties if it is to be a therapeutic healing process. Contact that ebbs and flows throughout a child’s development, driven by the child’s needs is key. Birth families are so powerful for the child or young person, and a collaboration between all the parents has the power to be transformative. Going forward, we need a therapeutic, developmentally matched contact programme for all children and young people who are care experienced.

Another important development for Family Futures this year is the very recent launch of our Wellbeing Hub. The hub is offering short term mental health and wellbeing support to children and young people in the London area, and also further afield with the option of online support. This hub will, in particular, offer a service to children and young people where neurodiversity is an issue as there are scant services available. The Hub will run alongside our existing Complex Trauma Service.

Finally, we are going to be having a new roof for our new building! We couldn’t afford a roof when we did the original building works and moved into our Hornsey Road home last year, but now it has become clear before next winter (and more rain) we really need a complete roof makeover. We will also be seeking funding for solar panels which we hope to be able to put in place to improve our carbon footprint for the future.

I am delighting in the sunshine and looking forward to spring ahead. 25 years has gone in a flash, but I can look back and be proud of all we have achieved. I am also looking forward and wondering what the next 25 years will bring!

To making the impossible happen! Thank you to all the amazing children, young people, parents, carers, trainees, professionals over the years, and all the lovely staff who make Family Futures what it is! What we have achieved would not have been possible without you, and has all been worthwhile because of you all!

With virtual hugs,

Jay

Jay Vaughan MBE

CEO, Registered Manager and Co-founder of Family Futures