LGBT+ History Month

As a lot of you will be aware, February is LGBT+ history month. It is a great opportunity for us to reflect upon and celebrate the contributions and achievements of our LGBT+ foster parents, colleagues, children and young people. There is a brilliant website with loads of resources, downloads, case studies, significant figures, etc, to celebrate the month: https://lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk/.

Please take a look and share with your families and young people.

It seems remarkable now, but it was only 16 years ago in 2005 that LGBT+ people had the right to adopt (when the Adoption and Children Act 2002 came into force).

We have come a long way since then, but still have some way to go in terms of achieving equality of opportunity and experience.

Interestingly, 1 in 6 adoptions are now to same sex couples, but I anticipate that proportion continuing to increase in the coming years.

As it's LGBT+ History Month I wanted to share with you my own recollections of how far we have come.

I remember doing some training for foster parents about 10 years ago around their role in supporting children moving onto adoptive families and presenting a few numbers around the identities of adopters.

If I recall correctly, the figure was somewhere between 5 and 10%, but significantly it had been close to zero in the 10 years before that.

To go from zero to 1 in 6 families in 20 years, does demonstrate how society can evolve.

There is an organisation called New Family Social that represents and provides a voice for LGBT+ foster parents.  Their website has some useful information and links:  https://newfamilysocial.org.uk/