Few states require foster homes to respect LGBTQ youths' identities
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The lack of explicit anti-discrimination policies around gender and sexuality can have dire consequences for children and teens, advocates say.
LGBTQ+ children and teens are 2.5 times more likely to be placed in the foster care system than their peers. And a growing body of research has found that LGBTQ+ children in the child welfare system move foster homes more frequently than their peers and are more likely to feel unsupported by their guardians or experience emotional distress.
But just five states require foster homes to respect children’s and teens’ gender identity and sexual orientation, according to a new report from Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization focused on LGBTQ people. The lack of anti-discrimination policies can have dire consequences for youth, said Linda Spears, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America.
“We see states where questions of … gender identity and sexuality are not allowed to be in the purview of public agencies,” she said.
In April, for instance, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill allowing adults with religious or moral objections to LGBTQ identities to foster and adopt LGBTQ children. Critics fear the law will upend a previous policy requiring youths in state custody to be treated with “dignity and respect” based on their gender identity, expression and sexual orientation.
Government or agency policies that discourage LGBTQ+ protections are likely to exacerbate youth’s poor mental health conditions and increase their risk of adverse life outcomes, according to the Lambda Legal report.
“The support system for [LGBTQ] kids can be pretty fragile, and they can feel pretty isolated if they’re in a [foster] family that is not accepting of them,” Spears said. “That can mean disruptive behavior to get themselves out of there [or] running away.”
Anti-LGBTQ policies in some states contribute to a system “designed for family separation,” said Alexandra Citrin, senior associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy.
In 2022, for instance, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton deemed gender-affirming medical care “child abuse” and Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate parents who assist their children in accessing such treatment. An estimated 30,000 transgender children ages 13 to 17 live in Texas, sparking fear of family separations.
To reduce negative experiences for LGBTQ+ adolescents in the child welfare system, the Lambda Legal report calls for state lawmakers to consider gender- and sexual orientation-affirming policies.
The five states—California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Nevada and Rhode Island—that include gender identity protections in statute have approached the issue differently.
Nevada's Division of Child and Family Services’ Bill Of Rights for Children in Care in 2023, for instance, says “a child placed in a foster home has the right … To be free from discrimination or harassment based on actual or perceived race, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, mental, medical, or physical disability.”
In California, a law that went into effect this year requires approved foster families to be potential foster parents to “demonstrate an ability and willingness to meet the needs of a child, regardless of the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
“Foster youth have a right to be placed in out-of-home care according to their gender identity and the right to have caregivers that have received instruction on cultural competency and sensitivity relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and best practices for providing adequate care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children in out-of-home care,” the law states.
While some states lack formal anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ youth in foster care, they have moved to support them in other ways. In Massachusetts, for example, the state’s child welfare agency has identified 16 trans-affirming homes across the state.
Public systems have a responsibility to young people and their families, said Citrin, of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. If a child welfare worker doesn’t, for example, use an adolescent’s preferred pronoun or support their sexual orientation, it “shows me you don’t see me.”
“If you can’t see me,” she asked, “how can you provide me care?”
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