Family Futures welcomes Adoption UK’s statement highlighting the impact that changes to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) are having on children and families
As a Voluntary Adoption Agency (VAA) we welcome Adoption UK’s focus on the very real consequences of the ASGSF changes. Almost 3,000 children with a plan for adoption are waiting, yet there are less than half that number of approved adopters. At a time when children urgently need families, prospective adopters are understandably hesitant to step forward when the support they may rely on is in doubt. The uncertainty surrounding the ASGSF is not only destabilising support for adoptive and SGO families, it is leaving children’s futures hanging in the balance.
The ASGSF represented a lifeline for thousands of children and families. Instead of cutting or reducing it, government should be building on what we know works – support that is consistent, collaborative, informed by evidence and guided by lived experience.
For over 27 years, Family Futures has provided specialist, research-evidenced assessment and therapy, rooted in lived experience and designed to work with families in crisis. Our multi-modal model is most effective when we work consistently with families, alongside the local authority social workers, as part of a truly collaborative team. The proposed changes will present further challenges for regions, local authorities and service providers who will have to meet the needs of children and families with even less resources.
As painful as this process has been the government now has the potential to create a system that genuinely works for adoptive and SGO families, and that could extend to foster families too. We know what helps children thrive and we must be bold enough to choose it.
You can find our published research and findings here.
Download our recent Gender and Sexuality Webinar here
Our Gender and Sexuality webinar is now available to download here Gender and Sexuality Webinar – for parents and carers (free webinar). Thank you to all who joined us on 16th April to learn more about this important topic which is present in everything we do in life, both implicitly and explicitly. Gender and sexuality is central to family life, to child development, and to wider cultures and society. This webinar gives an overview of the biological, psychological, and social aspects of gender and sexuality, focussing on (but not exclusively) those outside the cisgendered heteronormative frameworks.
Training or webinar queries?
To discuss any queries or book a live webinar or training for your organisation, contact Tamsyn, or have a look at our information leaflet here.
Festive season opening hours
Family Futures will be closed for the holidays from 5pm on Friday 20th December 2024 and will re-open at 9am on Thursday 2nd January 2025.
If you are a family in treatment with Family Futures and have a serious emergency or crisis during this time and you think that the crisis requires the emergency services, we suggest you call them first.
Families in assessment or treatment at Family Futures can also contact our out of hours advice line if you need further help. On the days when the office is closed a Duty Manager will be available between 10am and 4pm.
Call us on 020 7354 4161 to be connected with one of our therapy team.
We wish all our families and everyone we work with a peaceful and happy Christmas and New Year.
Season’s Greetings from the Family Futures team. We look forward to seeing you in 2025!
Family Futures celebrates 25 years of helping families heal
“When I grow up I want to work for Family Futures as it is somewhere where everyone feels safe” – a child’s view
We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary year! Family Futures started in April 1998 with a team of three and an answering machine. We’ve now grown to a multidisciplinary team of over 30 staff who help children with their mental health and wellbeing, as well as offering vital support to parents and carers, training professionals and supporting people to become therapeutic adoptive parents and foster carers.
Co-founder and CEO of Family Futures, Jay Vaughan, said:
“It feels extraordinary to be looking back on 25 years of Family Futures. When we started, nothing like this existed in the UK, and adopters were being failed by the total lack of support available for adopted children who had experienced early life trauma or abuse. Now the picture is very different, and we are pleased to see more support and understanding of developmental trauma around the UK. This has been acknowledged by governments putting funding like the Adoption Support Fund in place, as therapy and support is essential for many adoptive and special guardianship families to go on to thrive.
We are also proud to have expanded our services over the years to help fostered and kinship care children, as well as young people struggling with their mental health or wellbeing who can access therapeutic support through the Family Futures Wellbeing Hub.
“Thank you to all the amazing children, young people, parents, carers, trainees, professionals and staff over the years who have made Family Futures what it is! ”
– Jay Vaughan MBE, CEO and co-founder
See our 25th anniversary newsletter for more news about our anniversary, early bird tickets for our anniversary conference on 20th October, a new podcast episode and more.
You can subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date with our news through the year here
25th anniversary – letter from Jay Vaughan MBE, co-founder and CEO of Family Futures
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
The Big Half, Sunday 4th September
It’s here! Our runners will be setting off between 09.40 and 10.10, starting at Tower Bridge and ending at Cutty Stark in Greenwich. If you’re planning to cheer them on you can watch from 1 mile onwards or meet them at the finish. Find all the information about why we’re running via this link.
There’s still time to donate and you can see more route information plus tomorrow’s highlights on @FamilyFuturesUK and @officialBigHalf social media channels or https://www.thebighalf.co.uk/the-events/the-big-half
Our Hornsey Road Forever Home – virtual launch
On Friday 24 June we held a virtual launch event to celebrate the opening of our new Forever Home in Hornsey Road, Islington. It was an emotional event with passionate speeches by the builders and mortgage company, as well as some young people and adoptive parents. The event highlighted that this was a venture which meant so much to so many people – the children and their families first and foremost!
Everyone involved was touched by a sense of the importance of what Family Futures does and its work in supporting traumatised children from the care system. We were delighted to welcome the Deputy Mayor of Islington, Councillor Gary Heather, to introduce the official opening and witness the ribbon cutting by two children and their mum who attend Family Futures. A video of the event will be available soon – look out for this on our social media.
Jay Vaughan, CEO and Registered Manager of Family Futures said:
“Once more I want to thank everyone for all the different ways in which they supported us in this incredible move during the pandemic from our leased premises at Floral Place to our Forever Home in Hornsey Road, Islington. We could only manage this transition because of the help of all the families and children, the team, the donors, the Clothworkers Foundation, the Arsenal Gunners fund, the Fitzpatrick Team builders and Unity Trust Bank.
It really was a team effort and felt really epic to get to the point where we could celebrate having moved in. We couldn’t have done it without you, so a huge thank you to everyone for making the dream of a permanent, specially designed premises a reality.”
Adoption information evening, 14 July
Are you considering adoption? If you’d like to find out more, join us for our next information evening on Thursday 14 July at 6.30-8pm on Zoom. You’ll hear from an i adopt parent about the assessment process and what it’s like to adopt. Please register to join us at the event here.
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and walks of life. To find out more have a look at our adoption information or call us on 020 7354 4161. We’d love to hear from you!
LGBT+ Adoption & Fostering Week 2022
#Bethechange #proudtoadopt #proudtofoster
We’re recruiting…
We’re looking to recruit a Senior Psychological Therapist to join our therapy team and an Assessment and Therapy Services Co-ordinator. If you’d like to be part of our outstanding service and work for a nurturing employer, why not find out more about these roles on our jobs page.
