Statement of purpose

• Family Futures is a Voluntary Adoption Agency and therapy centre. We are registered as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC).  Family Futures has been providing services for more than twenty-five years and has four successive Outstanding ratings from Ofsted, the most recent being in 2022.  Family Futures VAA and IFA provides a range of services all devoted to supporting traumatised children and young people to meet their potential and achieve positive outcomes in their lives. We offer a Complex Trauma Service for care experienced children and young people, and a Wellbeing Hub which provides short term intervention for children and young people and their families.  Family Futures provides an integrated service that is thoughtful about how to support children and their families, whether they are attending our specialist Complex Trauma Service, our Wellbeing Hub or placed with an iAdopt parent (a parent who has been assessed and approved by Family Futures).  All children and young people attending our Complex Trauma Service, due to their histories of trauma and subsequent attachment difficulties, are likely to struggle at times and at different stages of their development. At these times Family Futures will be there to step in and provide support to help children and those who parent them, begin to make sense of their history and the impact this is having on them and all aspects of their development.  

  Family Futures believes that in order to help children it is essential to support the family as a whole, as trauma reverberates around the system around the child or young person. Family Futures’ Neuro Physiological Psychotherapy model (NPP) is relevant to all aspects of Family Futures’ work with children and their families and is used to help make sense of children’s behaviour and support them both physiologically and emotionally in order for them to feel safe, happy and achieve their potential in all areas of their lives. It is for this reason that Family Futures has an interdisciplinary team as supporting families encompasses all aspects of their lives.  

  The Complex Trauma Service and our short term intervention, the Wellbeing Hub, works in partnership with parents or carers to help them provide the structure and nurture their children need to heal from their early experiences and to help ensure they think about their family as a whole and their own self care needs. We aim to be part of the network that supports the child and the family.  

  The services Family Futures offer are: 

  • a specialist, interdisciplinary Complex Trauma Service for children and young people with a history of developmental trauma who are fostered, adopted, placed in special guardianship placements or kinship care or occasionally living with their birth parents. This service provides a range of therapies for children and parents underpinned by Family Futures’ Neuro Physiological Psychotherapy (NPP) model, which is neuro-sequential in approach and has been peer reviewed and published as research (2016 and 2019). 
  • a Wellbeing Hub which offers short term intervention for children, young people and their parents who are struggling with mental health challenges and neurodiversity. This service is informed by Family Futures’ Neuro Physiological Psychotherapy (NPP) model and offers a range of intervention from sensory integration assessment and therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, educational psychotherapy and more.  
  • iAdopt adoption service – recruits, prepares and assesses prospective adopters based on our understanding of the needs and challenges faced by children and young people who have been looked after and have experienced developmental trauma. Family Futures also provide a matching and post adoption support service for these approved adopters. 
  • Training services – an extensive associated programme of specialist training and consultation or supervision both at Family Futures and around the UK.  
  • Research – Family Futures also carries out ongoing and published research into the effectiveness and outcomes of our work. 

Mission 

To improve the lives of children who have experienced developmental trauma, have neurodevelopmental conditions, or who are struggling to achieve their potential by: 

• providing therapeutic support to help children and their families heal 

• finding safe, loving families for children in care 

• conducting research and providing an evidence and experience base for good practice we can disseminate to other professionals and services 

• providing innovative training to parents, carers and professionals. 

Aims and objectives 

• At Family Futures, we believe that every child has the right to grow up in a stable, safe and nurturing family environment.  

• We recognise that adoptive parents or foster/kinship carers are the primary channel for change and healing in adopted, fostered and kinship care children. In order to optimise parent potential as agents of change they need intensive support and appropriate therapeutic input for the child. 

• We also believe that lots of children and young people along with their parents can benefit from short term intervention and support to help them achieve their potential and a service that is interdisciplinary and family-based is vital. 

• Family Futures is committed to innovation based on theory and research from the human sciences. 

• We believe adults and children are individuals in their own right and that they are of equal worth whatever their race, culture, disability, gender, sexual orientation, social class, marital status, age, religion or other belief systems.  

• Family Futures is fully committed to the active promotion of equal opportunity in the work it undertakes, its employment practices and in the provision of all its services. Every possible step will be taken to ensure that children, parents, carers, prospective parents, foster/kinship carers, consultants and staff are treated equally and fairly. 

• Throughout our contact with children, their views, wishes and feelings will be listened to and are considered of paramount importance. 

• Every child, parent and family has a right to the highest standard of professional practice based on the most up to date theory and research. 

• Every child, parent and family deserves to be safe so our risk management and integrated safeguarding process are of the utmost importance. 

• We believe that in order to provide a service of excellence we need to invest as an agency in staff support and training. 

• As a not-for-profit agency, we are committed to all the children and families we work with and to ensuring that we provide a service of excellence that offers value for money. 

Complex Trauma Service and Wellbeing Hub– Aims and Objectives  

• To provide NPP interdisciplinary assessments for children, young people and their families, be they adoptive, special guardianship, kinship care, foster families or birth families. 

• To provide NPP interdisciplinary wraparound treatment programmes for high risk, complex children and young people and their families. 

• To provide short term intervention and support for children and young people in their families who need therapy and support. 

• To provide bespoke NPP-influenced therapy modalities for children and young people and their families. 

• To work collaboratively with the wider systems around the family, including professionals and particularly education services.  

Permanency Services – Aims and Objectives 

iAdopt 

• To assess, approve and match adoptive parents for children who need families who are in the care of local authorities. 

• To focus on preparing adoptive parents for children with complex needs but to also consider parents for younger children. 

• To provide lifelong support and appropriate therapeutic interventions at different stages of development.  

• For younger children placed with iAdopt parents, depending on their needs, to provide early Theraplay intervention or BUSS (Building Underdeveloped Sensorimotor Systems) or Sensory Integration in order to ensure placement stability. 

• For older children with complex needs placed with iAdopt parents to provide wraparound, interdisciplinary treatment. 

• To support children and young people in making sense of their life stories and to be in contact with their birth relatives as and when appropriate.  

• To support children and young people in education and in accessing employment in the future.  

Training and Consultation/Supervision Services – Aims and Objectives 

• To provide consultation and or supervision to individual professionals or organisations to support their thinking and approach when working with traumatised children. 

• To provide training to disseminate Family Futures’ thinking and research into what helps to support traumatised children in their lives. 

• To encourage professionals to develop their skills in specialist therapeutic approaches such as body based therapy, Sensory Integration, Theraplay, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), Therapeutic Life Story Work and Neuro Physiological Psychotherapy (NPP).  

• To provide regular training courses for adoptive parents or carers to help them look after their own needs as individuals or a couple as well as to support their parenting of their child. 

• To continue to undertake research in order to enhance learning about how to help children and young people who have experienced early trauma and to disseminate this thinking to other professionals, parents and carers. 

Procedures for assessing and treating traumatised children 

In order to access the assessment and therapy service there is a four staged process: 

• Initial enquiry telephone support line leading to paper referral process 

• Interdisciplinary NPP assessment which formulates from all the information gathered during the assessment process. This includes a whole family assessment meeting with the interdisciplinary team, psychometric data highlighting the child or young person’s difficulties and also their strengths drawing information from schools, parents and where appropriate self-report. The resulting conclusions and recommendations for treatment do not necessarily involve a package of support at Family Futures  

• To offer alongside this specialist additional assessments including cognitive assessments, sensory integration assessments, speech and language assessment and attachment and trauma informed Autistic Spectrum Disorder assessments 

• An interdisciplinary NPP treatment programme for children, and their family, who have complex histories and need a high level of support in all aspects of their lives 

• A bespoke focused intervention that is underpinned by NPP and integrates such interventions as Sensory Integration, Theraplay, DDP, Art therapy, Educational Psychotherapy 

• Treatment programmes are regularly reviewed and amended as the child and family’s needs alter. Following any piece of therapeutic intervention there is a process which involves a closing report, liaising with the network and evaluating or re-testing the child or young person for clinical evaluation of the service.  

The Wellbeing Hub specialises in supporting children who are neurodiverse. Parents/carers looking for a short-term intervention for their child who is struggling with their mental health and wellbeing can access the Wellbeing Hub through the below procedure.  

• Parents/carers make an enquiry to the Wellbeing Hub and are contacted by a member of the therapy team for a short introduction call and a registration form is completed to decide on the therapy that would best meet the child’s needs. 

• The child/parent take part in a 6/12-week block of therapy. The therapy offered comes under the following categories: Occupational Therapy, Sensory Integration, Theraplay, Creative Arts Therapy, Talking Therapy and Parent Support.  

• All Wellbeing Hub Therapy is underpinned by Family Futures’ holistic Neuro Physiological Psychotherapy (NPP) model of therapy.  

• As part of the process the child will undertake an assessment. This will take place over the first three weeks of therapy and will focus on the child, their relationships, and their wider world. Theraplay interventions will include a MIM assessment.  

• At the end of the Therapy block, another block can be scheduled, or the sessions can end. Families will be sent an Ending Summary Letter.  

• Stand Alone Sensory Integration Assessments can be booked to find out if your child is experiencing difficulties with sensory integration. The assessment will use a range of tools such as the Sensory Integration Praxis Test, Movement ABC, McMaster Handwriting Protocol, Ayres Clinical Observation and Beery VMI. Following the OT assessment a short report is produced.  

iAdopt is part of Family Futures and is designed to provide prospective adopters with the understanding and resources to therapeutically parent children who have experienced early trauma.  iAdopt placements are predominantly with the children who wait the longest, these children have typically experienced higher adversity in their birth families. Family Futures recruits prospective adoptive parents who are open to parenting therapeutically and aware of the challenges they might face.  

Family Futures complies with the mandatory checks of the assessment process: pre-approval checks for all prospective parents, to identify anyone who may not be suitable to care for children and vulnerable young people. Throughout the assessment process prospective adoptive parents work with not only social workers in the team but also members of the interdisciplinary team. The assessment process uses a range of therapeutic tools to carry out the assessment and to gain a comprehensive insight into attachment histories, current attachment styles, stress responses and triggers. These tools are often experiential and incorporate creative art therapy techniques as well as psychological profiling.  

The information gathered during the assessment process highlights the family’s support needs, informs the matching process and the post placement support needs.   

Family Futures recognises the importance of a support network, so the team at Family Futures host a network meeting to talk to the network about the parents or carers decision to take a traumatised child into their family.  

The Family Futures iAdopt team provides approved parents with support during the adoption process, supported by the specialist assessment and therapy team.   

Family Futures’ Adoption panel have regular training and annual appraisal’s, panel are also invited to join regular information exchanges where they are updated on progress and performance of the iAdopt service.  

The procedures for recruiting, preparing, assessing, approving and supporting iAdopt parents 

• An advertising process to recruit adopters including online promotions and word of mouth 

• An initial enquiry phone call and consultation to provide information about Family Futures’ iAdopt service and explore basic issues for the applicants around suitability for adoption as a screening and information gathering process resulting in the decision as to whether to embark upon the stage one assessment process including safer recruitment process 

• Stage one assessment process including analysis of the applicant’s relational styles, capacity to reflect on their emotional states, capacity to work with the assessing team, as well as their references, statutory checks and a health and safety home visit. This takes place within two months unless there are unusual circumstances as to why not 

• If following stage one, the applicant is considered not suitable to adopt then the applicant is informed and reasons are given  

• Stage two assessment process includes a full assessment of iAdopt parents’ background, likely parenting capacity, ability to recognise and meet their own needs and ability to understand the impact of early trauma and disrupted attachments on young children. This stage involves comprehensive psychoeducation, the Family and Friends network meeting to strengthen the support capability of the family network 

• Once stages one and two are completed and all safety checks are in place, the Prospective Adopters Report (PAR) is written for panel. Prospective adoptive parents are provided the PAR in advance to add their comments before panel 

• Family Futures is guided by the statutory timescales and will work to ensure these timescales are met  

• Once the Panel recommendation for approval has been ratified by the ADM then the approved adopters will begin to family find supported by their assessing social worker 

• The Family Futures matching process includes an offer of an assessment of the child/rens therapeutic needs and the likely needs in his/her adoptive placement  

• Prior to placement, agreement is sought with the local authority for any therapeutic package provided by Family Futures to include funding and use of the ASF  

• If there are any safeguarding concerns Family Futures’ policy and procedures will be followed  

• Family Futures also provides a peer support group for approved adopters called the iAdopt community  

Training and Consultation Services

Family Futures is committed to offering a training programme which disseminates the latest thinking on supporting children and young people to heal from early trauma. We offer a training programme for professionals as well as bespoke training around the UK for local authorities, Regional Adoption Agencies, schools and other organisations and professionals providing services.  

Family Futures specialises in providing intensive training courses (typically lasting 2-4 days) that focus in detail on a particular area to enable participants to learn new skills which they can take into their practice. Our courses run at Family Futures in London and also online. Training can be followed up by a bespoke online consultancy service which is a successful way of embedding new training into an organisation’s practice. We have also published training resources and webinars which are available on our website.   

Family Futures uses the secure cloud-based system CHARMS to record data about adopters and children placed, enabling us to track the number of enquiries received from potential applicants, attendance at information evenings and progress made throughout the assessment journey. We can also report on family finding, matching, transitions and early placement support.  All details of the assessment and support, including timescales, are recorded on CHARMS.  

In addition, Family Futures routinely collects data about the adopters approved by us and the children placed with them, sharing the relevant data with national bodies such as the CVAA and ASGLB in order to inform the national picture of placements, availability, etc. 

As part of the annual report to directors, Family Futures logs data such as numbers of placements, gender and ethnicity to identify any gaps and areas for improvement.    

Family Futures Community Interest Company (CIC) is a not-for-profit organisation.  Family Futures is not subsidised by charitable, government or other grants. We generate income from the services we provide including interdisciplinary therapeutic assessment and treatment services, provision of training to professionals and caregivers, assessment of prospective adoptive parents, and post placement therapeutic services.  

Family Futures has a fee structure devised to ensure the income we generate from the services provided is sufficient to pay our running costs. These costs include but are not limited to rent, rates, insurance, staff costs (salaries, pensions, employers NI etc.), utilities, maintenance (IT, fixtures and fittings, property etc.), therapy and office supplies, equipment, planned and unplanned expenditures.  

In order to ensure the effective management of finances, managers closely track income and expenditure by analysing detailed monthly Management accounts, the Cashflow statement and analysis of staff hours. This enables managers to track how efficiently our most valuable resources (staff time) are being used and ensures that the organisation remains financially viable.   

Family Futures reinvests in the community by sourcing locally when available and facilitating the free use of its premises by a London-wide peer support charity for adoptive parents. Family Futures as a not-for-profit, does not pay bonuses or dividends to its employees or directors.   

Name and address of Registered Provider 

Family Futures CIC, 440a Hornsey Road, London, N19 4EB 

Telephone: 0207 354 4161 

Website: www.familyfutures.co.uk 

Company Accountants and Family Futures’ Registered Address: Simpson Wreford & Co, Wellesley House, Duke of Wellington Avenue, London, SE18 6SS. Telephone: 020 8317 6460 

Company no: 8423617 

Responsible Individual and qualifications 

Responsible Individual: Stephen Mulley, Therapy Service Manager, MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, BSc(Hons) in Occupational Therapy, Diploma in Creative Approaches to Supervision (cross-modal), Theraplay Practitioner, DDP.

Registered Manager and qualifications  

Registered Manager: Jay Vaughan, Dramatherapist M.A. DPP, SEP, Theraplay Practitioner, Supervisor and Trainer. NVQ 4 Management. More than 25 years of experience in the field of adoption and fostering. 

Company Solicitors 

Russell-Cooke Solicitors, 2 Putney Hill, London, SW15 6AB. Telephone: 020 8789 9111 

Family Futures has the following staff team:  

• CEO and Registered Manager  

• A team of Managers responsible for Business and Finance, Operations, the Assessment and Permanency Service and the Therapy service 

• A senior team consisting of a Head of Marketing, Communications and Fundraising, a Permanency Team Leader and Clinical specialists 

• An interdisciplinary team made up of social workers who have therapeutic training, psychological therapists from various different disciplines, occupational sensory integration therapists, assistant psychologists as well as some trainee therapists who are supported to a high level by senior team members 

• There is also external supervision/consultation for each discipline provided if that discipline is not represented in the senior team, and an overall external case consultant. 

• An administrative team including HR and finance specialists and co-ordinators overseeing the training service, the permanency service and the assessment and therapy service 

• Fundraising volunteers and a final year trainee psychologist on placement. 

All interdisciplinary team members have a recognised and regulated qualification in their discipline and have also taken part in the Family Futures induction and NPP practice forum induction programme, as well as attending specialist training such as Theraplay or Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), Therapeutic Life Story Work and Family Futures own peer evaluated evidence-based therapy model: Neuro Physiological Psychotherapy (NPP). 

You can view our current staff team here

Family Futures has a comprehensive agency manual which outlines its policies and procedures all of which are available to staff and carers online. These policies and procedures are annually updated with other updates as and when required.  

The policies and procedures are also available to parents, children and young people if appropriate, and partner agencies. For the purposes of this Statement of Purpose two key policies are referenced below, these are Family Futures Integrated Safeguarding, and Family Futures Complaints process.  

Family Futures is committed to ensuring that the agency’s service users are safeguarded from all forms of abuse, neglect and/or exploitation, whether deliberate or inadvertent, in accordance with written policies and procedures. Everyone at Family Futures has a duty to ensure that the safeguarding of children is given priority. Family Futures has an Integrated Safeguarding Policy that ensures that throughout the organisation there is coherent and consistent safeguarding good practice, whether that is in the recruitment of staff, safety measures in the building or responding to children and young people’s disclosures. This safeguarding process is integrated because it links risk management, local authority referral and notification procedures as well as positive interventions and careful management of risk in sessions. 

This integrated process is based on the premise that all these elements are interrelated and need to be considered together in deciding on the correct course of action to take. 

Family Futures is always open to feedback. This is sometimes positive and sometimes there are lessons to be learned. Family Futures has a Complaints procedure which is designed to embrace the principle that all service users have access to the policy including children and young people. We encourage feedback from young people with our post box for ideas and concerns in Reception. All service users are encouraged to give feedback during and after assessment or treatment, in the case review process at the end of treatment, following iAdopt assessments, as well as when they have undertaken training.  

The policy for complaints is a transparent one with complaints being handled promptly, and the first stage of any complaint is to try and resolve it informally. Following this informal process there is a formal process if the dispute isn’t resolved, and an independent process if need be following this. Family Futures has an Independent Person, Reem Wipfler, who undertakes the independent process should this be required.  

All children are given copies of appropriate Children’s leaflets whether they attend the assessment and therapy service or are placed with our approved parents or carers. The Children’s leaflet gives them information about how to complain using the Family Futures complaints process but also their right to complain to Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner and information about how to do this. 

Please see our children’s guides here.

• For the Family Futures VAA and IFA as a whole: 
  • Family Futures CIC Independent Person, Reem Wipfler carries out onsite annual inspections as part of our internal Mocksted process 
  • Annual agency reviews of all services 
  • Annual Strategic Planning Meetings to review policies and practice as well as to undertake strategic planning 
  • Regular data collection for Ofsted and CVAA 
  • Registered Manager with the Director of Operations are responsible for annually updating the Agency’s Policy and Procedures in the light of legislative and regulation changes. 

   

  The Assessment and Treatment service as well as the Permanency services and Training service are regularly evaluated as follows: 

  Assessment and Treatment Service 

  • Regular Case Supervision and Consultation 
  • Post-assessment report dissemination and evaluation for feedback about the assessment process is undertaken 
  • Parent and child consultation to ascertain their wishes and feelings for case reviews 
  • 6-monthly or annual case reviews depending on the level of intervention 
  • Annual re-testing programme using psychometric data 
  • End of treatment evaluations 
  • Annual evaluation for families in treatment 
  • On-going research and reviews  

   

  Permanency Service 

  Family Futures’ Permanency Service which includes both the iAdopt service assessing and approving adoptive parents are regularly evaluated:  

  • Regular case supervision and consultation 
  • Regular team meetings and case discussions to evaluate prospective adopters during the assessment process 
  • Consultations with the Agency Advisor and the Agency Decision Maker  
  • Panel training and reflection days to look at previous assessments, outcomes of placements, reviews of iAdopt cases and consider improvements needed in the service 
  • Participation in LAC reviews for newly placed children 
  • Annual evaluation at the end of assessment processes for iAdopt  
  • Transfer meetings as and when appropriate to the assessment and treatment service where families then become evaluated under that service 
  • iAdopt reviews 
  • On-going research to evaluate the placements and the model used to provide support 

   

  Training and Consultation Services 

  • Every participant is asked to complete a feedback form evaluating the content of the reviews 
  • Agencies who have commissioned training packages are also asked to complete evaluations.   

The Registration Authority is Ofsted whose address is: 

Ofsted 

Piccadilly Gate Store Street,  

Manchester,  

M1 2WD 

Tel: 0300 123 1231 

Email: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk 

Website: www.ofsted.gov.uk 

https://contact.ofsted.gov.uk/contact-form 

The Children’s Commissioner for England can be contacted by young people for free by phone, website or email: 

The Help at Hand team 

Freephone: 0800 528 0731 

Email: help.team@childrenscommissioner.gov.uk 

Website: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/help-at-hand/