Words by Damian Kerlin
Design by Yosef Phelan

I adopted my children through St David's Adoption Agency in Cardiff in 2018, and I want to say, before anything else, that I would not have my family without them. That is not a small thing and I do not say it lightly. But if you'd asked me, in the thick of it, whether the process felt like it was built for me, the honest answer is: not quite. It was alright. It got the job done. It was never unkind. It just never once felt like it had been designed with LGBTQIA+ people in mind, more like we'd been slotted into a system built for someone else and everyone was doing their best to make it fit.

For years I told myself that was just what adoption was like: slow, procedural, a bit clinical, and that any gap I felt was mine to close rather than theirs. It's taken me a while, and a lot of conversations with other adopters, to realise that isn't actually true, and that the experience varies wildly depending on who you sign up with. 

LGBTQIA+ adopters are now the second-largest group of adopters in England, with roughly one in six adoptions in recent years going to same-sex couples

None of this is happening in a vacuum, either. Police-recorded hate crime against LGBTQIA+ people in England and Wales has risen by roughly a fifth over the past five years, and trans-related hate crime has climbed by half in the same period, according to Home Office figures. Stonewall's own tracking shows the UK has slid to 22nd out of 45 countries on ILGA-Europe's annual ranking of LGBTQIA+ rights across the continent, a decade after topping that same table. And yet the adoption figures tell a genuinely different story: LGBTQIA+ adopters are now the second-largest group of adopters in England, with roughly one in six adoptions in recent years going to same-sex couples, a proportion that rises to one in four in Wales. That contradiction, more people building families in a climate that feels less safe to do it in, is part of what sent me looking for agencies that are actually getting it right.

So, I did what I always do when something's been nagging at me: I went looking for evidence. I spoke to other LGBTQIA+ adopters up and down the country, dug through Ofsted reports and agency websites, and tried to work out where things are genuinely being done differently, and better.

So you're thinking of adopting?

Before we get into the list, a quick primer. You don't have to find "the" agency for your area, you can apply through your local authority or any voluntary adoption agency operating in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, wherever you live, so it's worth ringing round rather than defaulting to the first name you find. Here's what the first steps typically look like:

  1. Register your interest. Most agencies start with an informal call or an information evening – no commitment required, just a chance to ask questions and see if it feels right.
  2. Submit your formal application. This triggers checks (DBS, medical, references) and assigns you a social worker.

Begin your assessment (the "home study"). Expect several months of visits and training sessions before you go to panel for approval, after which matching with a child can begin.

Damian with his adopted sons

Was it just me?

Short answer: no, and also, it's complicated. Every adopter I spoke to had a version of the same story, a mix of the bureaucratic and the deeply personal, and almost everyone had a moment where they felt like the process paused to double-check they belonged in it. What separated the good experiences from the merely adequate ones wasn't really about slicker branding or a rainbow flag on the homepage. It came down to smaller things: whether the social worker paired with them had actually worked with same-sex couples before, whether the training days assumed a mum-and-dad shape by default, whether anyone bothered to ask what "mum" and "dad" even meant for their particular family. Agencies that got that right tended to be the smaller, specialist ones, or the bigger charities that had put real years into building LGBTQIA+ expertise rather than bolting it on.

You are, in a very real sense, choosing who gets to shape one of the biggest experiences of your life. You're allowed to be picky.

If there's one piece of practical advice I'd hand to anyone starting this process, it's this: don't apply to the first agency that lands in your inbox after a Google search. Ring two or three. Ask them directly how many LGBTQIA+ families they've placed, whether their social workers have specific training, and whether they partner with New Family Social, the UK-wide network run by LGBTQIA+ adopters and foster carers, which several of the best agencies use to plug new applicants straight into a peer community. You are, in a very real sense, choosing who gets to shape one of the biggest experiences of your life. You're allowed to be picky.

So here they are: eight agencies, across all four nations, that came recommended by adopters, or that stood out for the way they talk about and support LGBTQIA+ families. St David's isn't among them, not out of spite, but because I wanted this list to be useful to you rather than a review of my own experience. What follows is a genuine mix of small charities and large national organisations, independent voluntary agencies and statutory services, so wherever you live in the UK, there should be somewhere to start.

1. PACT (Parents and Children Together) — England

PACT is an Ofsted Outstanding-rated independent adoption agency covering southern and central England, and it's exactly the kind of charity that keeps coming up when you ask LGBTQIA+ adopters who they'd recommend. It's a partner of New Family Social, so applicants get folded into that peer network from day one, and its social workers assess your capacity to parent, not your sexuality.