There’s a story our culture loves to tell about adoption: a child leaves a difficult start behind, joins a loving family, and everything is made right. It’s a hopeful story, and parts of it are true. But it leaves out many crucial elements.
Early experiences continue to shape how children understand safety, relationships, and themselves.
Early experiences of abuse and trauma – even those occurring during pregnancy – also impact the normal course of child development.
A new family is born, with the grief, loss, and trauma of the first one, still present.
The reality behind the ‘happy’ ending
Around 3-4,000 children are placed with adoptive families in the UK each year. The vast majority, often estimated at over 80%, have experienced abuse, neglect, or violence before being removed from their birth families. Many have lived through multiple foster placements, each one another disruption to their developing sense of who is safe and who can be trusted.
By the time a child arrives in their adoptive family, their brain and nervous system and sense of self have already been shaped by these early experiences. The need for love within the stability of a new family environment is essential, but it’s only the beginning of a healing journey, not the end of one. This is coupled with the reality that the majority of adoptive parents arrive at this point following their own experiences of infertility and perhaps the loss of a more straightforward path into parenting.
Prospective adoptive parents go through a long process of assessment, preparation, and support to become parents – which includes psychoeducation around attachment and trauma and it’s impact on developing babies and children – however living with this trauma, is vastly different to understanding it in theory. The day-to-day task of parenting traumatised children is likely to challenge even the most resilient of parents.
Adoption UK’s 2025 Barometer paints a stark picture: 42% of established adoptive families reported facing severe challenges or crisis, a record high (Adoption UK Barometer Report (2025). Nearly two-thirds experience dysregulated violence and aggression from their child. For families with teenagers, the figures are even more concerning. Only 10% of adoptees and adopters feel that public services understand the needs of care experienced young people and 72% of those who accessed CAMHS support did not think it was positive. And only 18% of adopted young people aged 16+ (including adopted adults) feel that an appropriate range of therapeutic services and support are available.
These are families who chose to love children with the most difficult starts in life. They deserve recognition for that, and they deserve proper support.
What adopted children, young people & their families actually need
Children who have experienced early relational trauma need more than a safe home – though that matters enormously. They need caregivers who can understand the impact of their early experiences and can respond with patience, empathy, and skill, even when the child’s behaviour is pushing them away. Many are also likely need to need specialist therapeutic support to help them process their experiences and develop safe relationships. Caregivers are also likely to need specialist support that recognises that their experiences of parenting are vastly different from conventional parenting, and can be demanding, isolating, and complex. Sustained support is vital for the stability and resilience of their families. Looking at the stat above, it’s clear that the majority of families also need vastly improved trauma-informed care and understanding from the services that support them.
Our work is grounded in an integrative, evidence-informed approach to supporting children and families affected by early relational trauma. We draw on the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation, a deeply compassionate framework that understands children’s behaviours – even the really difficult ones – as adaptive responses to danger. This model is supported by a growing body of clinical and assessment research.
Alongside this, we integrate therapeutic approaches such as Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), Theraplay, and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), which offer complementary ways of working with attachment, affect regulation, and trauma within the context of caregiving relationships. These approaches are widely used in practice with adopted and care-experienced children; however, the strength of the empirical evidence varies. For example, DDP has a developing evidence base with promising clinical findings, and UK guidance has highlighted the need for more rigorous evaluation of commonly used attachment-focused interventions. Emerging research also suggests that integrative models combining approaches such as DDP, EMDR, Theraplay and sensory-regulation-informed work are feasible and acceptable for adoptive families, though evidence for efficacy is still limited and further research is needed. This reflects a broader reality within the field of developmental trauma: no single model or intervention fully captures the complexity of children’s needs, and the evidence base continues to evolve.
For this reason, we are committed to evidence-seeking practice. This includes critically engaging with emerging research, contributing to practice-based evidence, and adapting our interventions in response to outcomes, theory, and the lived experience of families. Our aim is not to apply any one model rigidly, but to integrate the best available evidence with clinical expertise and a relational understanding of each family’s unique context.
The support gap
The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) has been a lifeline for many families, funding therapeutic support that most could not otherwise afford. In April 2025, the government dramatically reduced available adoption support funding from its previous levels of £5,000 per child per year to a single allocation of £3,000 per child per year. In addition, the separate ring-fenced allocation of £2,500 for specialist assessment was scrapped altogether. In April 2026, the government re-confirmed the fund for a further two years at the reduced levels and whilst as a service we are continuing to support adoptive families, we’ve noticed the devastating impact of reduced support on the families we work with. The tone of the recent DFE consultation on the future of adoption support indicates that the fund itself may cease to exist from April 2028, leaving an uncertain future for adoptive families.
Meaningful therapeutic work takes time and requires building trust, working with the family system, and addressing layers of experience that can’t be resolved in a handful of sessions. Cutting funding doesn’t reduce need; it just leaves families without the help they were promised, and often exacerbates the risk of future crisis.
There is hope
Despite these challenges, we see families make extraordinary progress every day. We see children who couldn’t tolerate being held, begin to seek comfort from their caregivers. We see parents who were close to breaking point rediscover moments of joy in their relationship with their child. We see teenagers who had given up on adults, begin to tentatively trust again. This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through skilled, compassionate therapeutic work that holds the whole family in mind.
At LCAT, supporting individuals and families move from despair to hope, is at the heart of what we do. We understand the unique challenges families face, and if you’re reading this and your family is struggling, please reach out. You’ve already done something extraordinary by opening your home and your heart. You don’t have to do the next part alone.
References:
- UK Department for Education – Children looked after & adoption stats
- Adoption UK – Adoption Barometer (2025)
- NICE – Attachment & trauma guidance (NG26, NG116 context)
- Crittenden, P. – DMM literature
- Becker-Weidman (DDP research)
- EMDR evidence base (e.g. WHO/NICE PTSD guidance)