How Do We Help LGBTQ+ Youth In Foster Care When There Are No LGBTQ+ Adults Around Them?
In Massachusetts, we pride ourselves on our progressive values and legislation. We were the first state in the US to legalize same-sex marriage, and we’re often at the forefront of other progressive legislative movements. But the LGBTQ+ youth in our state experience interpersonal and institutional discrimination at the same disproportionate rate as the rest of our country. Trans and LGBTQ+ youth experience homelessness, bullying, threats made with weapons at school, suicide attempts and a lack of support from their parents and school professionals, all at significantly higher rates than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Though Massachusetts has made some positive gains for LGBTQ+ people, it hasn’t translated to better outcomes for youth, especially those in foster care. But the good news is, we can address these problems when we welcome and involve LGBTQ+ foster families and social workers more in the child welfare system.
LGBTQ+ kids are not only more likely to be in care, they also face additional discrimination in care. This report from the Center for the Study of Social Policy does a great job illustrating the inequalities between queer youth and their cis, straight peers in foster care. I’ve also seen these inequalities play out in my job. Recently, a trans youth in our care was removed from her foster placement because her foster parents wouldn’t use her correct name and pronouns. It was a mutual decision between both parties for her to leave, but it took about a month to find her a new, safer foster placement.
In the three years since I became a social worker, I’ve never worked with foster families who are openly against queerness. However, there have been times when I’ve chosen to wear more feminine clothing when working with families because I was unsure how they would respond to me and my queerness. And when my team and I explore a potential placement for a youth, we think carefully about whether that family can be supportive and affirming of that youth’s LGBTQ+ identity. Though fostering an LGBTQ+ youth might be a learning opportunity for a foster parent, we don’t want to expose a queer kid to a home environment that is not affirming.
As a queer social worker, I worry that trying to confront these sorts of non-affirming beliefs directly will impact my relationship with the foster family and I won’t be able to support the youth in their care as effectively as I need to. But I do think it’s a social worker’s responsibility, and especially a straight ally’s responsibility, to educate our foster families and increase their exposure to affirming ideas about gender and sexuality.
I think our Intensive Foster Care team is getting better at broaching queer issues with foster parents, because I’ve been loud about how important it is. But in Family Services, another CFCS program, our staff has had the opportunity to discuss this topic with adoptive families for many years now. Additionally, Massachusetts’s MAPP curriculum and homestudy process includes discussing LGBTQ+ youth needs in foster care as a standard part of the process. And during Pride Month in June is a good time for social workers to ask foster parents about their experience with the queer community.
We can create effective change within our social work agencies when we work on reaching out to LGBTQ+ communities to hire more LGBTQ+ staff and recruit more queer foster families. This recruitment should be happening across the board in Massachusetts, not just in agencies like ours but in the Department of Children and Families and the Office of Health and Human Services!
The thing is, I am the one queer social worker on my team, and I’ve worked with queer youth because of that fact. If you don’t have a workforce that is more directly connected to the LGBTQ+ community, you’re not going to have much of a connection with that community. Sometimes, straight folks might not feel comfortable reaching out to these communities because they’re worried about saying the wrong thing, and they often don’t know where to start. When we have people who know where to start, we can create and strengthen those connections. We’ll be able to improve our practices to support LGBTQ+ youth and families much more effectively.
This is just as important in foster parent recruitment. There’s not very many LGBTQ+ foster families because they may be hesitant to work with agencies who aren’t clear about whether they’re open and affirming to the LGBTQ+ community. In CFCS’s foster parent recruitment, we try to be as clear as possible that we support and advocate for queer families of all constellations, but not every agency communicates this stance so openly.
It’s so important for queer youth in care to be in queer households because it’s life-affirming. When queer youth in foster care don’t have positive role models, when they feel unsure about their future and have experienced a lot of hardship, it’s easy to think, “Maybe I’m going to be homeless my whole life. Maybe I’m not going to be happy or okay.” Queer foster parents can be very encouraging for queer youth. When youth in care have LGBTQ+ foster parents, they have a positive example of adults who are like them. When youth see adults like them who are doing well, in good relationships, have stable employment and most importantly, are happy, they think, “That could be me. I can be happy too.”
Further reading:
Become a Foster Parent with CFCS Today!
The Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ+ Youth's FY21 Report and Recommendations
Out of the Shadows: Supporting LGBTQ Youth in Child Welfare through Cross-System Collaboration