LGBTQ+ Adoption & Fostering Week returns on Monday 4th March and children’s charity and voluntary adoption agency, Adoption Matters, is supporting the week with pride.
LGBTQ+ Adoption and Fostering Week is led by New Family Social – the UK’s peer-support charity for LGBTQ+ adopters, foster carers and special guardians.
When the campaign started in 2012, adoption in England by same-gender couples stood at 1 in 31, in 2023, the proportion was 1 in 5.
This theme of this year’s week is ‘Different Together’ and it calls on more people from the LGBTQ+ community to consider adoption and fostering, while also highlighting that children from diverse backgrounds are sometimes harder to place.
In England in 2023, there were 83,840 looked-after children – 3 in 10 of these children – 29 per cent – were from minoritised ethnic groups, showing the need for more adopters from diverse ethnic groups is both great and urgent.
Adoption Matters CEO, Susy White, has emphasised the charities support of the campaign:
“We are so pleased to be involved with the LGBTQ+ Adoption & Fostering Week again as we know from experience that people from the LGBTQ community often come forward to adoption with a real enthusiasm.
“It is often their first choice to build a family and with that they provide the commitment, resilience, stability and love that children need.
“We welcome enquiries from the LGBTQ+ community this week and every week – sexuality isn’t an important factor in our assessment of prospective adopter.
“You can be single, over 50 and you don’t need to own your own home to consider adoption – we just need people with stability, love and resourcefulness in order to help a child with whatever needs that they may have.”
To mark the end of LGBTQ+ Adoption & Fostering Week, Adoption Matters will be hosting an Online Adoption Information Event, where you can find out more about their charity, the children waiting, the adoption process and the support that they offer, on Saturday 09 March at 10am – you can sign up on www.adoptionmatters.org/events.