The Adoption Barometer 2025: Why The UK Care System Still Isn't Fit for Purpose (And How the Susan Vickers Foundation Steps Up)

Posted on September 20th, 2025

This week, the 2025 Adoption Barometer dropped like a bombshell across the UK care sector. And honestly? The findings are both heartbreaking and infuriating. After decades of promises, reviews, and policy changes, we're still failing the most vulnerable children in our society.

But here's what gives me hope: organisations like the Susan Vickers Foundation aren't just talking about change: they're making it happen, one care-experienced person at a time.

The Shocking Truth About Our Care System

Let's start with the most damning finding: our system "frontloads attention on finding adoptive families for children but then neglects the long-term support most adoptees need to thrive once adopted."

Think about that for a moment. We're brilliant at the PR-friendly bit: finding loving families for children who need them. We celebrate placement day, we tick boxes, we move on. But what happens six months later when that child is struggling with night terrors? Or when they're 16 and trying to understand their identity? Or when they're 25 and navigating their first serious relationship whilst carrying the weight of early trauma?

The system shrugs and says, "Job done."

The statistics paint an even starker picture. 71% of adopted children have suffered significant trauma: that's nearly three-quarters of children entering adoptive families who are carrying invisible wounds that need specialist, long-term care. Yet our approach treats adoption like a simple transaction: match child with family, placement complete, case closed.

Where Universal Services Fall Short

The Barometer also highlights something we've known for years but haven't properly addressed: our universal education and health services simply aren't equipped to support adoptive families.

Picture this: a seven-year-old adopted child has a meltdown in class because another child mentions their "real mum." The teacher, with the best of intentions, doesn't understand that this isn't just "naughty behaviour": it's a trauma response. The school sends them to the headteacher, parents get called in, and everyone feels frustrated because nobody has the tools to help.

This scenario plays out in schools across the UK every single day. Our teachers are incredible, but they're not trained in attachment theory or trauma-informed approaches. Our GPs are skilled, but they might have just 10 minutes to understand complex adoption-related mental health needs.

The result? Families feel unsupported, children's needs go unmet, and everyone blames everyone else whilst the real problem: systemic gaps in understanding and provision: remains unaddressed.

The Stigma That Follows Care-Experienced People

Here's another uncomfortable truth the Barometer reinforces: care-experienced young people still face massive stigma, largely due to society's lack of understanding about their backgrounds and experiences.

I've heard care-experienced adults say they feel they need to hide their history from employers, partners, even friends. Why? Because people make assumptions. They assume you must be "damaged goods" or "difficult" or that somehow, your childhood circumstances reflect your character.

The reality is that most children enter care through absolutely no fault of their own. They're not "problem children": they're children who've experienced problems that adults should have protected them from. Yet the shame and stigma follow them throughout their lives, creating additional barriers just when they need support most.

How the Susan Vickers Foundation is Filling the Gaps

This is where organisations like the Susan Vickers Foundation become absolutely crucial. Whilst the system talks about change, they're actually delivering it.

Attachment Trauma Training That Actually Works

The Foundation recognises that you can't support care-experienced people effectively without understanding attachment trauma. Their training programmes don't just tick boxes: they transform how professionals think about and respond to care-experienced individuals.

When a foster carer understands why a child hoards food under their bed, they respond with compassion rather than frustration. When a social worker recognises hypervigilance as a survival mechanism rather than "challenging behaviour," they can provide appropriate support. This isn't rocket science: it's about giving people the knowledge they need to help effectively.

Access to Specialist Therapists and Counsellors

One of the most significant gaps the Barometer highlights is long-term therapeutic support. The Foundation addresses this head-on by connecting care-experienced people with therapists who actually understand their experiences.

Finding a therapist is hard enough for anyone. Finding one who understands the complexity of adoption, the grief of family separation, the identity questions that arise from being care-experienced? That's like finding a needle in a haystack. The Foundation makes these connections possible, ensuring that when someone is ready to do the hard work of healing, they have the right professional support.

Lived Experience at the Heart of Everything

Perhaps most importantly, the Foundation puts care-experienced voices at the centre of their work. This isn't about well-meaning people making decisions for care-experienced individuals: it's about supporting them to make their own decisions and find their own paths.

Susan Vickers herself embodies this approach. Her journey from care-experienced child to successful broadcaster and advocate demonstrates what's possible when someone receives the right support at the right time. But more than that, her willingness to share her story publicly helps challenge those harmful stereotypes and stigma.

Cultural Capital: The Hidden Advantage

Here's something the traditional care system often misses entirely: the importance of cultural capital. Middle-class families unconsciously pass on knowledge about how the world works: from understanding university applications to knowing how to navigate professional networks.

Care-experienced young people often miss out on this crucial learning. The Foundation recognises this gap and works to develop cultural capital so individuals can enhance their understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures, leading to more respectful and inclusive interactions.

This isn't about changing who someone is: it's about giving them additional tools to navigate systems and opportunities that might otherwise remain closed to them.

Truth, Transparency, and Healing

The Foundation also champions something revolutionary in the care world: honesty. Too often, professionals think they're protecting children by hiding difficult truths or sugar-coating realities. The Foundation believes that being truthful with foster and adopted children is essential for their emotional well-being and long-term development.

This doesn't mean traumatising children with inappropriate information. It means age-appropriate honesty delivered with sensitivity and support. When children grow up with gaps in their story, they fill those gaps with their imagination: and their imagination is usually far worse than reality.

The Ripple Effect of Real Support

What I find most powerful about the Foundation's approach is how it creates ripple effects. When one care-experienced person receives proper support and goes on to thrive, they often become advocates and supporters for others. They prove what's possible. They challenge assumptions. They change the narrative.

The Foundation's work demonstrates something the Barometer makes clear: when you invest properly in long-term support for care-experienced people, everyone benefits. Families are stronger, communities are richer, and society gains the full contribution of people who might otherwise struggle to reach their potential.

What Needs to Change

The 2025 Adoption Barometer shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone working in this field. We've known for years that the system prioritises process over people, short-term solutions over long-term support, and bureaucratic convenience over human need.

What we need is a fundamental shift in approach: from crisis intervention to prevention, from placement-focused to support-focused, from professional-led to lived-experience-informed.

Organisations like the Susan Vickers Foundation show us what this looks like in practice. They demonstrate that when you combine professional expertise with lived experience, when you prioritise relationships over procedures, and when you commit to long-term support rather than quick fixes, remarkable things happen.

The care system might not be fit for purpose yet, but change is happening. Every care-experienced person who receives proper support, every professional who receives trauma-informed training, every family who gets the help they need: these are the building blocks of a better system.

The Foundation's motto says it all: "Turning Pain Into Purpose." That's not just a slogan: it's a roadmap for transformation. And whilst we're waiting for the system to catch up, organisations like this are making sure nobody has to wait for the support they need to thrive.

The 2025 Adoption Barometer shows us how far we still have to go. But it also reminds us why this work matters so much. Every care-experienced person deserves better than a system that forgets about them the moment they're placed. They deserve support, understanding, and the chance to turn their pain into purpose.

That's not just morally right; it's the foundation of a fairer society for all of us.