You yearn for more than just the odd weekend with your nephew and niece. OutUK's
Adrian Gillan explores the options, from fostering and adoption to giving a lady
your sperm.
FOSTERING AND ADOPTIONFoster caring does not involve the same legal responsibilities as adoption, and tends to be on a shorter-term basis, after which the child is reinstated with its birth family or is able to live independently. You have an ongoing relationship with social services and are paid for the fostering. With adoption, on the other hand, you take on full legal parental responsibility, including the finance, and break away from social services. Note that unless and until the current Children & Adoption Bill becomes law, only married couples or individuals can adopt, so necessarily excluding one member in any non-married partnerships, including gay partnerships, from legal responsibility. | |
| More and more social services departments in the UK are explicitly stating as policy that they will not discriminate against potential carers, whether fostering or adopting, on the grounds of sexuality or single-parenthood. Statistics are hard to come by, but in practice there have been very few placements with gay individuals or couples, especially amongst gay males. |
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For starters, you'll face the same hurdles as everyone: interviews, home assessments,
group workshops and panel approvals at both local and national level. But of course,
there's also the gay thing. Despite much recent research and a few favourable court
rulings following placements, there can often still be explicit and implicit discrimination
at every stage, and there's a large amount of pot luck, depending on where you're based
and who you are dealing with.
There is also a history of not placing girls, infants or very young children with gay men who tend to be offered - if offered anything at all - 'problem' or 'special needs' children. The process has been tinged with the underlying prejudice that gay men are at best second rate parents and at worst perverts. A more recent option has been to adopt from overseas countries like South Africa who don't discriminate against adopters on grounds of sexuality, though everything would still have to be approved by your own local social services. The best starting point on the web for any gay parent or parent-to-be is at PinkParentsUK which contains advice and articles covering all the main issues, links to other relevant sites and support groups, plus a helpline staffed by people with first-hand experience of gay parenthood. | |