LGBT+ people encouraged to foster or adopt

Rochdale Borough Council is supporting a national campaign for LGBT+ people to consider fostering and adoption.

With 80,000 children in care in 2020 in England alone, the charity New Family Social led LGBT+ Adoption & Fostering Week at the beginning of March, encouraging LGBT+ people in the UK to explore adoption and fostering as potential parenting routes.

Since 2012, the number of same-sex couples adopting reached one in six in England last year, a record in both its proportion and total figure.

Councillor Kieran Heakin, cabinet member for getting a good start, said: “Foster carers do a wonderful job; one we’re very grateful to them for. We are always keen to recruit more carers from our wonderfully diverse community.

“We want to keep children local and in loving homes, but we need more foster carers to help us so if you’ve been thinking about fostering then contact us.”

Local couple Declan and Anthony* were approved as foster carers just over five months ago. They now care for two siblings aged 13 and 10.

Anthony said: “In the new year of 2020 I was becoming disillusioned with my job and really wanted to make some changes. We discussed the possibility of fostering and, after encouragement from my friend who was a foster carer, we enquired. After sending my first email to express interest I quickly received a reply and an appointment was arranged for a social worker to come out and visit us and have a chat about fostering, it was really exciting.”

They are both keen to dispel the myth that you must have parenting experience in order to foster.

Declan said: “I remember when the social worker came to visit us for our initial visit, she was really friendly, and we still remember the joy of hearing her say ‘I think you’ll make lovely foster carers’. That was such a special moment for us.

“We have no parenting experience but have other experience we can draw on with our family and friends. We’ve gone straight into fostering older children and it’s a wonderful experience. Our home is full of love, fun and a little bit of chaos, which we think is the perfect mix.”

They are both starting a regular blog for the council to highlight the role of fostering and give an insight into their daily life.

If you are interested in fostering, visit rochdale.gov.uk/Fostering.

If you want to find out more about adoption please visit adoptionnow.org.uk.

*names have been changed to protect identities.