All children have the right to feel safe, thrive and reach their potential

• Sunday Mirror

• 16 Nov 2025

• BY SIMON MURPHY

Brian Cox blasts adoption fund cuts

Brian aged four with sister Bette, behind on the left Motherland’s Anna Maxwell Martin is calling for U-turn

SUCCESSION star Brian Cox has thrown his weight behind a campaign to reverse cuts to a fund that provides vital therapy for vulnerable adopted kids.

Funding for individuals under the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund, which also helps those in kinship care looked after by family or friends, was slashed by 40%.

Now the Emmy award-winning actor, whose older sisters rallied to care for him as a child, has added his name to those demanding a U-turn.

Brian, 79 – whose films include Braveheart, Churchill and The Bourne Identity – is supporting the call after Motherland star Anna Maxwell Martin’s plea last month.

In a powerful video for the campaign group Action Against ASGSF Changes, one-time Labour supporter Cox says: “All children have the right to feel safe, thrive and reach their potential.

“Adopted and kinship children and those under special guardianship orders are no different.

“The Labour government has cut a vital fund that supported these children. The ASGSF is a lifeline that allows adopted and kinship children and young adults to access specialist assessments and therapy.

“Therapy that cannot be accessed in any other way.

“No matter your start in life we have, as a nation, a moral obligation to individuals and society as a whole to ensure that we have the best chances to be happy and healthy.

TRAUMATISED

“I am supporting the urgent call for the government to reverse all cuts made to the ASGSF, conduct an independent and robust consultation with the families and make the ASGSF a permanent ringfenced fund.

“I urge you to support the campaign against the cuts and sign the open letter to the minister for children and families, Josh MacAlister.”

Brian, from Dundee, endured a tough childhood, sharing a two-bed flat with his parents and four siblings. He and his brother slept in the living room alcove, he once said.

His dad, who had a grocer’s shop, died when Brian was eight and his mum suffered nervous breakdowns.

The actor, whose “traumatised” brother joined the army aged 16, told this paper: “I was totally dependent on my three sisters.

“They looked out for me as much as they looked after me.”

He described eldest sister Bette, who died aged 92 in 2023, as “my absolute rock”. He adds: “She was the one who was Dundee-based… I’d spend a lot of time with her. So she was fantastic to me.

“And I also stayed with my youngest sister for quite a lot of the time until she emigrated to Canada.”

Asked what his message to PM Keir Starmer was on the therapy fund, Brian says: “What he should realise is that fund is so much more important because there is much more kinship around now than there is family. And that’s the sad thing about the state of family. We have to think about kinship because of the crisis within working class lives. Because of heroin addiction and alcoholism.”

The government announced in April that it was cutting the fund from £5,000 a year per child to £3,000 – a 40% drop.

A separate £2,500 per child sum for specialist assessments was scrapped altogether. And the ASGSF no longer match-funds support for kids with exceptional need.

Campaigners met with minister Mr MacAlister on Wednesday but came away unimpressed.

A spokesperson for Action Against ASGSF Changes said: “The cuts were made without warning, evidence or consultation. The minister offered no credible explanation and showed no willingness to engage with the impact of those cuts.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “Through our Plan for Change, we’re committed to ensuring adopted and kinship families receive the help they need.

“In September, we committed to continuing the ASGSF for another year, until April 2027. The difficult decisions we have taken this year will support the sustainability of the fund, allowing more children to access therapeutic support.

“We will conduct a public engagement process in the new year to understand how children can be supported effectively. An update will be provided in due course.”

BRIAN COX ON HIS CHILDHOOD