While the adoptions statistics in England are fantastic, it isn’t the first country in the UK to achieve 1 in 7 adoptions by same-sex couples in a year. In fact Wales achieved this impressive proportion in 2018, before falling slightly in 2019.

Outside England, each country in the UK faces its own unique issues with recruiting LGBT+ adopters and foster carers. In some regions there is a cultural barrier that means few people consider adoption as an option. In others one half of the country may routinely recruit a diverse pool of adopters or foster carers, but the other half struggle to recruit any at all.

For these reasons New Family Social is reorganising that way it approaches each country, so that our services can be better targeted to local need. In practice this means that instead of approaching Scotland and Wales as regions in their own right, each country will be split into north and south operations, making it easier for us to better reach our social worker colleagues in each country.

This also means that we’re changing our approach in England, again adopting the government’s regional boundaries. In practice this means that while the number of regions in England diminishes, there’s an increase in the regions of operations in Wales and Scotland. For the time being Northern Ireland will remain one region until our expertise and adoption/fostering inclusion work develops in that country.

These changes will take place in the second quarter of 2020, with work feverishly ongoing to make sure that our member agencies have the access they need to the new site to develop their work.

Takeaway:

• New Family Social is honing the way it works with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to improve its service delivery in each country, with the goal to see an increase in the number of LGBT+ people applying to adopt or foster in each.
• Wales was first country in the UK to achieve 1 in 7 adoptions to same-sex couples in a year.
• New regions follow government boundaries for our member agencies’ ease.