This practice guidance toolkit has been developed to assist practitioners working to support people with learning disabilities to recognise and take appropriate action when there is a risk of forced marriage. It is designed to be used by any frontline practitioner involved in assessing capacity to consent to marriage and provides resources and tools to aid practitioners in doing so.
The toolkit seeks to supplement existing multi-agency guidelines published by the UK Government Forced Marriage Unit and practitioners are advised that they must also adhere to their specific professional guidelines and Local Authority and Health Trust policies relevant to this area of their practice.
Download the toolkit (PDF)
Change needs to happen to keep people safe. Forced marriage of people with learning disabilities is different to forced marriage of people without learning disability and, as such, it is often not recognised as forced by families, faith leaders or professionals. This document tells the stories of people with learning disabilities who have been forced to marry. Each case study is a composite of various stories and reports from actual cases though the people depicted in them are fictional.
We hope that by highlighting the experiences of people with learning disabilities who are forced to marry we will open up debates by and for practitioners so that changes to safeguarding policy and practice might happen more quickly and effectively. We hope that the case studies will provide practitioners and others with a greater understanding of the issues.
Download the case study collection (PDF)
This document (in a variety of formats) summarises the main findings of the research project and makes recommendations based on the emerging issues:
We would welcome your feedback on these resources:
Email your feedback
Please note: document download speed may vary in different browsers and for different devices.
University of Nottingham Law and Social Sciences BuildingUniversity Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD