Gay and Homeless Youth in Foster Care: Discrimination and Reform

Origins and Scale of Youth Homelessness

The phenomenon of homeless and runaway young people is viewed by many authorities as a human rights condition that grows out of poverty and victimization, often occurring within their family settings, and later on the street, where they are further exposed to violence and other forms of dysfunction. The International Perspective on the Health Needs of Homeless Youth uses the term "street children" to refer to those below 18 years old who live in various ways on the streets. The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimated that there were between 30 and 170 million street children and youth in the world.

UNICEF divided these young people broadly into two categories. The larger group consisted of youngsters who engaged in some economic activity in the streets and often returned to their families at night. The smaller group consisted of young people who thrived in the streets by working and living there, although some had family ties. UNICEF estimated that 75 percent of all street children belonged to the larger group, which it described as "on the street," and 20 percent were "of the streets," while only 5 percent were truly abandoned or without family ties.

Harrowing and immovable poverty was seen as the foundation of homelessness in most countries and prevented families from providing the basic developmental needs of children and other young people. With or without family ties, these young people engaged in economic activities, including casual work, marginal occupations, and work in the informal sector. The informal sector was made up of small, competitive, and family-owned and run trades, such as selling candies and cigarettes, clearing garbage, car windshield washing, watching cars, and carrying luggage. International figures revealed that many of these homeless youth were exposed to huge health risks, including Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and to sexual orientations such as homosexuality and bisexuality, prostitution, and substance abuse.

Runaway Categories and Survival Strategies

Runaway and homeless youth were not new in the United States. In the 19th and 20th centuries, many young men would leave home in pursuit of adventure or out of rebellion toward strict parents. It then became easy for them to get incorporated into a new group and to find work. In the 1960s, many young people left their families and homes and joined subcultures or countercultures, though the incidence was not adequately recorded in ways that could today reflect the role and extent of abuse, dysfunction, and neglect. A 1968 study of young male prostitutes showed that most of them came from dysfunctional families. Records from the mid-1970s to the present increasingly show that street life exposes these young people to all kinds of risk, including sexual exploitation and drug abuse.

Many of these homeless young people are called "runaways," described by the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act as juveniles who leave and stay away from home without parental consent. Of the different categories of runaways, the largest is composed of situational runaways, who leave their homes for a day or two because of a conflict or disagreement and eventually return home after a few days. They can join a chronic runaway group, composed of other young people who left home because of neglect, abuse, or some other serious problems. If they stay away from home longer, they become chronic runaways and eventually turn into street children or youth.

These chronic runaways do not return home at all but abide in friends' dwellings, cheap hotels, or squat in abandoned shelters. They take full charge of their own survival and, in the process, fall prey to violence and other dangers. The other and smaller groups of runaways are the "throwaways" and systems youth. "Throwaways" are those whose parents abandoned them, asked them to leave, or subjected them to extreme abuse or neglect. Systems youth are those who often have no more family contact and previously lived in private or public institutions or foster homes but have left these and become part of the runaway culture. Those younger than 11 are usually returned, but older and unwilling ones remain in the streets and survive with other street youth.

There are no accurate records of runaways, but national studies on missing children place the number of runaways at half a million and 127,000 "throwaways," although other studies raise the figures to 2 million. They do not live in adult shelters where they can be formally counted but independently in parks, streets, subways, and abandoned buildings and shelters. There are more runaway girls living in shelters, while there are more boys who move farther from home. Their median age is 14 to 16, while those younger are reported by parents or reach the attention of shelters.

Sexual Orientation and Family Rejection

One of the most common survival techniques to make money among these street youth is "survival sex." Both male and female street youth engage in sexual activity to buy food, secure shelter, drugs, or afford protection from someone older and more street-smart. Newcomers may have little or no knowledge or orientation on prostitution, but making easy money through sex soon becomes less formidable to them after seeing how it works for others in the group. Prostitution among these youngsters is higher in big urban areas like New York and Los Angeles and likelier among gay adolescents.

Studies reveal that many of these runaways leave home because of conflict with their parents over the youth's sexual orientation. There appear to be no reliable records on the number of homeless gay adolescents because many heterosexual young males also engage in homosexual activities or relationships for money. A 1988 study reported that 20 percent of subject male runaways in New York acknowledged that they were gay. Another study from the same year reported that 16.5 percent of males interviewed admitted engaging in gay or bisexual activities.

At any given time, there are approximately 260,000 young people in foster care in the United States, and while there are no accurate figures, authorities believe that 5 to 10 percent of these are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ). Many suggest that the actual figures can be higher, because young people in this category tend to be over-represented in foster care owing to the discrimination and abuse to which they are subjected in their families and in school. As many as 78 percent of these young people in this category are subjected to further harassment or abuse when transferred to out-of-home care. These youth soon abandon placement and live on the street rather than endure the harassment or violence at home or at care institutions. A recent study showed that more than 30 percent of these gay youth are subjected to physical violence as soon as their sexual orientation is discovered. Their families reject that sexual orientation, beat them up, and then send them out. They join the ranks of throwaways absorbed by child protection agencies and later moved to foster homes.

Discrimination in Foster Care Systems

Further studies say that many gay youth enter the system by skipping or leaving school out of fear of getting discovered and harassment and discrimination in school. The studies show that more than 80 percent of them experienced verbal insult and harassment, and almost 70 percent felt unsafe about their gender preference. The National Network of Runaway and Youth Services assumed that 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning.

The typical gay youngster in the foster care system is often neglected or discriminated against by the staff and peers. The discrimination is made easy or worse by inadequate policies, protection, support services, and the staff's personal orientation against homosexuality. Few centers have policies that prohibit discrimination against gender identity or orientation in order to provide a friendly and accepting environment for gay runaway youth. Instead, they were treated with contempt and slurs, as 100 percent of the young subjects of a New York study claimed being subjected to verbal harassments and 70 percent to physical violence. Studies showed that such tormentors were not only peers but also the staff and social workers themselves. The youth were called names, laughed at, isolated, or moved by the institution to a more restrictive facility for fear that they would victimize other youth in that institution.

These youngsters were made to feel bad and blameworthy for the treatment and subjected to some form of conversion therapy in the hope that their mental or emotional makeup could be altered. Many of them conceal their homosexuality rather than endure the mistreatment or confront the basis for their gender choice. If they reach their limits, they abandon the institution and live in the streets as waifs. These are not isolated cases but sadly the standard treatment received by these problem youth, whose number has reached alarming limits and magnitude. While there are well-meaning welfare professionals in the child welfare systems, they are typically short of the needed training, resources, and other institutional support forms.

The fundamental objective of child welfare services is to protect children from harm, care for them, and provide for their best interests. When a family fails or becomes unwilling to provide these, the state comes in to fill this function during a child or young person's developmental years. State laws guarantee this provision and the protection of the civil rights of the young. While some local child welfare agencies and workers have taken steps to respond to the needs of these youth, the majority have remained indifferent or even oblivious to the reality of gay youth in their care and, instead, exhibit abusive and hostile attitudes toward them, who are the very object of their care.

There have been earlier calls for reform, prominently by a joint task force of New York City's Child Welfare Administration and the Council of Family and Other Child Caring Agencies, which presented a position paper on the misunderstood, neglected, and discriminated-against status of these young people. These groups emphasized that anti-gay views and feelings definitely have no place in the child welfare system, which should instead show support rather than blame and stigma to these young homeless. In addition to these complex difficulties, the youth are also confronted by mounting health risks, many of them unaddressed, and a high risk of suicide. A survey of students from grades 7 to 12 showed that 28.1 percent of them were bisexual or gay and 20.5 percent were bisexual or lesbian who had attempted suicide. Their ethnic or racial status further compounded their problems.

Proposed Reforms and Policy Solutions

The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (LLDEF) pressed for reforms in the form of non-discrimination policies, the proper training of foster parents and system staff, and provision of programs and services for these gay youth. Non-discrimination policies should prohibit discrimination based on the sexual orientation of foster care youth; the sexual orientation of foster parents or other foster household members; the sexual orientation of the staff; the youth's HIV/AIDS status or that of the foster care family, household, and foster care staff.

The demonstration of respect for gender preference under these policies would cohere with the dignity, respect, and support to which the young homeless are fundamentally and constitutionally entitled as human beings. The state should enforce and monitor strict compliance with these policies and provisions.

Foster parents and institution staff should also be educated and equipped with the right view and value toward these young people through high-quality training. Training should render them sensitive to other persons' sexual orientation and gender identity and foster greater acceptance and understanding for their choice. The training can lead foster parents and staff to view homosexuality as something other than a moral failing or disease to be cured, make these young ones feel safer in their gender preference, treat them and heterosexual youth with equality, be more responsive, protective, and supportive to these problem youth, avoid traditional gender stereotype impositions, work with their families toward overcoming bias, and observe confidentiality.

Another feature of these policies is the provision of developmentally appropriate sexual health education to these youth, including those with HIV/AIDS. This training should be imposed as a condition of foster parent licensing or employment. A number of organizations already began developing such training programs, which can be used as models and resources. One example was the Casey Family Program, a private provider of foster and long-term placement services, which trained 111 staff members on gay issues. Post-training evaluation showed statistical positive change in the staff members' sensitivity to the conditions of gay youth in their care. Other organizations that followed the lead included Green Chimneys in New York City, GLASS in Los Angeles, and True Colors in Connecticut.

Proposed programs and services for gay and homeless youth include the immediate transformation and equipping of all foster and group homes as safe places for gay youth; identification and training of foster parents; assigning gay "ombudspersons;" counseling for gay and questioning youth and to birth families; resources and community contacts; special training for foster parents of HIV/AIDS-positive gay and homeless youth; sexual education; and further access to confidential testing for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) affecting gay and homeless young people.

The LLDEF specified the adoption of strict policies against all forms of harassment toward these gay and homeless youth; the education of group staff and residents about the importance and operation of these strict policies; enforcing them efficiently by disciplining violators and subjecting them to counseling and re-education; establishing a truly gay-supporting environment in detail; and hiring or exposing these youth to openly living gay staff members to advocate or serve as role models. It also suggested that these young people be placed with previously identified gay foster parents; that the gay "ombudsperson" in child welfare settings or offices be appointed to respond to specific problems or questions of gay and homeless youth; and that provisions be made for resources and contacts for case workers, foster parents, birth families, and the gay and homeless youth, including support and peer groups, reading materials, and hotlines.