Gender Recognition

(asked on )

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he is taking steps to protect prospective adoptive parents from being barred because of conscientious objection to gender reassignment and gender recognition for under-18s; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 16th October 2018

The procedures for the recruitment and assessment of adopters are outlined in the Adoption Statutory Guidance, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/adoption-statutory-guidance-2013.

Adoption agencies must not refuse to accept a registration of interest from prospective adopters on the grounds of, for example, that individual’s ethnicity, age, health, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or because they do not share the same ethnicity, culture or religious beliefs as the children waiting for an adoptive family.

There are clear processes for prospective adopters to follow, if they wish to contest an adoption agency’s decision, including through the agency’s local complaints process or via the Independent Review Mechanism, depending on the stage of the process they had reached.

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