A welcome guide.

Brown, Helen Cosis

Recruiting, Assessing and Supporting Lesbian and Gay Carers and Adopters Gerald P Mallon and Bridgett Betts BAAF 2005 53 pages 9.95 [pounds sterling]

This much-awaited publication is an excellent guide for social work practitioners and their managers and, as such, is the first of its kind. It covers social work practice as well as giving an overview of legal, policy and contextual material pertinent to this area of fostering and adoption work.

The text falls into two distinct but connected parts: the first setting the context and the second directly addressing social work practice with lesbians and gay men in fostering and adoption practice. The two parts fit together well. There is material both for social workers new to this area and for those with more experience. Themes covered are: lesbian and gay identity; the legal context; research on lesbian and gay parenting; issues for lesbians and gay men when considering parenting; recruiting lesbian and gay foster carers and adopters; assessment of lesbian and gay foster carers and adopters; and providing them with support. The authors also include a list of relevant organisations. All the chapters are full of useful material and the 'practice' chapters are particularly helpful in their detail. The section on recruitment will be useful to agencies, specifically in relation to the recruitment of lesbians and gay men, but also more generally.

Further strengths include an accessible overview of the research into lesbian and gay parenting, as well as a current look at the legal context. All the material is relevant to the social work task.

As with most publications, the reader is left with a small number of frustrations. Firstly, some of the assertions made in the text, though presumably correct, were left unreferenced; in places the authors refer to existing research evidence without citing specific findings. This is frustrating as it is useful for social workers to be able to cite research evidence, especially in a climate where there is a need for an informed, knowledge-based approach--in particular in relation to potentially contested areas of practice. Secondly, there were some references in the text to interviews (for example, p 36) where seemingly the authors had spoken with a number of lesbian and gay carers. It would have been helpful for the reader to be told what interviews had taken place, their purpose and how they had informed this particular publication. Some of the quotations from these interviews weren't attributed (as on pp 25 and 26). Clearly such quotations had to be made anonymous but some information would have been useful. Lastly, for fostering agencies and social workers working with foster carers, especially short-term foster carers, a section specifically looking at supporting foster carers working with large numbers of significant adults of looked after children would have been helpful. Like the overall population, these adults often hold a range of views in relation to sexual orientation. They will have various attitudes and feelings about their child's carer's sexual orientation, ranging from feeling comfortable to feeling quite hostile. On occasions, the views of the child's significant adults are cited by a child's social worker as being a reason why they wouldn't want to place the child they are responsible for with a lesbian or gay carer. This is sometimes because they have assumed that the adults would object.

None of the above comments detract from the overwhelming usefulness of this guide. It is a long-awaited and valuable contribution to best practice guidance for social workers recruiting, assessing and supporting lesbian and gay carers. There is very little available that so directly looks at the minutia of practice, as well as providing a social, legal and policy overview.

Helen Cosis Brown is a Director of Greater London Fostering and an honorary reader at Middlesex University