Our Children Deserve Better:

16 Oct

Calling for Therapeutic Support After Adoption

I've written to my MP and Members of the Senedd about something I feel incredibly strongly about: the need for better access to therapeutic support for children who come to their families through adoption.

As a parent through adoption, I know first-hand how rewarding, wonderful and, at times, extraordinarily challenging parenting children who have experienced early trauma can be.

We know so much more today about the lasting impact of trauma, neglect, loss and disrupted attachments. We also know that, while love, stability and therapeutic parenting are enormously important, they aren't always enough on their own.

Yet too often, parents are left navigating complicated health, education and social care systems, fighting for specialist support and sometimes reaching crisis before their children can access the help they need.

And whilst training parents in therapeutic approaches is incredibly valuable, teaching parents to parent therapeutically is not the same as providing children with therapy.

The Welsh Government has already acknowledged gaps in therapeutic provision for care-experienced children. I believe it's time we moved beyond recognising the problem and made a meaningful commitment to addressing it.

I'm calling for every child who comes to their family through adoption to have a clear, continuing pathway to appropriate, trauma-informed therapeutic support, based on their individual needs.

Below is the letter I've sent to my elected representatives. I'm sharing it because I know we're far from the only family affected, and because I hope it encourages others to raise their voices too.

If this resonates with you, please consider sharing it or writing to your own MP or Member of the Senedd.

Our children deserve love, stability and belonging. But when they need it, they deserve specialist therapeutic support too.

Letter to Senedd

Dear [Name],

I am writing to you both as a constituent and as a parent of two children through adoption to ask you to raise the provision of therapeutic support for adopted children in Wales.

I want to begin by acknowledging that there has been progress. The National Adoption Service's Adoption Support Commitment and, more recently, the Welsh Government's National Practice Guidance for Therapeutic Support for Care Experienced Children and Young People demonstrate a much better understanding of the impact that trauma and adverse early experiences can have on children.

Indeed, the Welsh Government's own guidance acknowledges that there is currently a gap in therapeutic provision for care-experienced children and young people. It specifically includes adopted children and recognises that some children require therapeutic intervention because of their experiences despite not having a mental-health diagnosis or meeting the threshold for CAMHS.

My concern is what happens between recognising that gap and actually closing it.

The guidance explicitly states that it does not constitute a funding commitment to procure or create new services.

As a parent, this matters enormously to me.

Children do not come to their families through adoption without having experienced significant loss. Many have experienced trauma, neglect, abuse, disrupted attachments, prenatal exposure to substances or multiple changes of caregiver.

We now understand far more about the potentially long-term impact of those experiences.

Parents are rightly offered training in trauma, attachment and therapeutic parenting, and I have personally benefited greatly from that support.

But helping a parent to parent therapeutically is not the same as providing a child with therapy.

We cannot teach parents about the impact of trauma and then effectively expect them to provide the specialist intervention their children may need.

I would therefore like to see Wales establish a clear therapeutic support guarantee for children who come to their families through adoption: a continuing pathway to appropriate, trauma-informed therapeutic support throughout childhood and into young adulthood, based on individual need.

I am not suggesting that every adopted child should automatically receive ongoing weekly therapy. Children's needs differ enormously.

Rather, I believe specialist support should be proactively available, with families knowing from the outset how to access it, without children first having to reach crisis, acquire an additional diagnosis, or families repeatedly having to navigate complex systems and prove the extent of their difficulties.

When the state has intervened in a child's life to the extent that they cannot safely remain within their birth family, I believe there is a continuing responsibility to that child. An adoption order changes parental responsibility; it does not erase the experiences that made that order necessary.

I would therefore be very grateful if you could ask the Welsh Government:

How the acknowledged gap in therapeutic provision for care-experienced and adopted children is currently being addressed across Wales.
What funding has been or will be made available to translate the 2025 National Practice Guidance into additional accessible therapeutic provision.
How Welsh Government intends to ensure equitable access across Wales, rather than support depending upon geography or individual services.
Whether Welsh Government would consider establishing a clear, continuing entitlement or pathway to therapeutic support for children who come to their families through adoption, based upon their individual needs.

I would be very happy to share more of our family's experience, or to contribute to any discussion about how therapeutic support for children and families could be improved.

This is something I care deeply about, not only because of my own children, but because I believe we now know too much about the effects of early trauma to continue relying upon love, parental resilience and crisis intervention as our principal response.

Our children deserve love, stability and family. When they need it, they also deserve specialist therapeutic support.

Kind regards,

Kat Applewhite

Letter to MP

Dear [name],

I am writing to you as a constituent and as a parent of two children through adoption about an issue that I believe deserves much greater attention: long-term therapeutic support for children who come to their families through adoption.

I appreciate that adoption support, health and social care are largely devolved matters in Wales, and I am also raising this directly with my representatives in the Senedd. However, the experiences of adopted children and their families, and what happens when adequate support is not available, are issues that extend across the UK.

Children are not placed for adoption without having experienced significant loss. Many will also have experienced trauma, neglect, abuse, disrupted attachments, prenatal exposure to substances or multiple changes of caregiver.

We understand far more today about the potentially lifelong impact of those experiences.

Yet there remains a fundamental gap between what we know about childhood trauma and the support families can reliably access.

Parents are frequently offered training in trauma, attachment and therapeutic parenting. This can be enormously valuable and I have benefited personally from such support.

But there is an important distinction that I believe policy sometimes overlooks:

Helping parents to parent therapeutically is not the same as providing children with therapy.

Parents should not be expected to become the specialist therapeutic intervention for children whose early experiences may require professional support.

Here in Wales, Welsh Government's 2025 National Practice Guidance for Therapeutic Support for Care Experienced Children and Young People explicitly acknowledges a gap in therapeutic provision. It includes adopted children within its scope and recognises that some children may require therapeutic intervention because of trauma and adverse childhood experiences without necessarily having a mental-health diagnosis or qualifying for CAMHS.

However, that guidance does not itself carry a funding commitment to create or procure additional services.

I believe we need to move from recognising the problem to guaranteeing children an appropriate route to support.

My hope is that children who come to their families through adoption should have a continuing pathway to appropriate trauma-informed therapeutic support, according to individual need, rather than families having to wait for crisis or repeatedly fight their way through complex systems.

I would be grateful if you would consider how you might help raise this issue and support greater attention to the long-term needs of adopted children and their families, both in your constituency role and through any relevant work in Parliament.

When the state intervenes in a child's life because they cannot safely remain within their birth family, I believe our responsibility to that child should extend beyond finding them a permanent home.

Love and stability matter enormously.

But sometimes children need something more.