New Agreement Attempts to Safeguard LGBTQ+ Youth in Foster Care

Dan entered into the youth shelter system at the age of 17. 

As a young child growing up in Brooklyn, Dan said he experienced immense bullying and mistreatment as a result of his gender identity. After coming out as transgender in his junior year of high school, he said he felt a lot of pressure from friends, but also at home. 

Dan, who declined to give his last name, experienced multiple disagreements and homophobic reactions from his mother, leading him to seek refuge in a shelter. But as he cycled in and out of shelters, he didn't find the city's shelter system properly caring for him, or find staff that respected his queer identity.

Now, Dan is hoping young LGBTQAI+ people who find themselves in a similar situation will have an easier time in both the foster care and shelter systems as the city agreed in June to update their policies. 

As more and more LGBTQ+ youth enter into the system, the nonprofit Ali Forney Center, which runs a 24/7 shelter for LGBTQ+ youth, and the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) in June came to a historic agreement where the city must try to prevent abuse and create a process and environment that is gender-affirming. 

The agreement calls for the 2012 LGBTQ policy book to be updated to create more specific guidelines for workers — including, but not limited to, identifying warning signs during an investigation and how to conduct a proper assessment. 

In 2019, more than one out of three youths (34.1%) aged 13-20 in New York City foster care identified as LGBTQAI+, according to ACS.

The Center also asked for the city to provide additional preventative care measures for LGBTQ+ youth, including individual and family counseling, education and additional social services. 

“We want to keep kids in the home safe, and if that can be done…” Nadia Swanson, the director of Technical Assistance and Advocacy at the Ali Forney Center told BK Reader.

“Helping [families] get the education they need to show up for their kid will hopefully keep kids out of the foster care system and keeping families together, and subsequently, also keeping kids out of the runaway and homeless youth system,” they add. (Swanson uses the pronoun they.)

The nonprofit is currently working with ACS to introduce legislation at the state level, Swanson said. The legislation should begin with accurately tracking the number of LGBTQ youth who are in the foster care system, a bill that Councilmember Chi Ossé is currently sponsoring, they said.

ACS is regularly meeting with current and former youth and LGBTQAI+ advocates who provide services to youth to gauge their experiences and highlight any emerging or existing issues, according to Marissa Kaufman, a spokesperson for ACS. 

“ACS has identified LGBTQAI+ Point People/Champions in our Child Protection Division,” Kaufman told BK Reader. “These representatives will be tasked with supporting child protection direct service workers with best practices for working with LGBTQAI+ youth and will serve as a liaison to ACS leadership of emerging issues of LGBTQAI+ youth.” 

Dan did find some refuge when he found himself entering one of the Ali Forney Center's youth locations run by the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, which offered temporary housing until he could get back on his feet. There, he found access to free gender-affirming medical care, workers who used his preferred name and pronouns and a safe space to freely be himself.  

However, now that Dan is 19-years-old, he finds himself living in a women's shelter, after declining transitional housing due to mental health struggles. 

“Now that I have to stay in the women's shelter, I can say already, in the first two weeks that I have been here, it is pretty uncomfortable compared to being [in] an AFC shelter,” admitted Dan.

“Now I have to be referred to as ‘she and her,' which are, you know, things that I used to identify as when I was younger, which can also be, triggering for me.”