Child Welfare Practice with LGBTQ Youth and Families

by

Gerald Mallon

• LAST REVIEWED: 26 May 2021
• LAST MODIFIED: 26 May 2021
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389678-0298

Introduction

The actual number of LGBTQ+ youth in the child welfare system in the United States is unknown, as this information is not collected at the federal level. There are some studies that use state-level and/or population-based samples to estimate these numbers; but they are not representative of the nation as a whole. Moreover, many of these data samples do not include samples of trans and nonbinary youth. Thus, documenting the disproportionality of LGBTQ+ youth in these systems is still in the early phases of development. Social workers and child welfare professionals play essential roles as case managers, therapists, and advocates with youth and families who are LGBTQ+ as they negotiate their lives in these systems. This annotated bibliography provides knowledge and applications that will help social workers and child welfare professionals as they increase their knowledge, competencies, and skills in working with this population of young people and their families. Drawing on classic texts, social workers can understand some of the historical and fundamental knowledge necessary to work with youth and families in child welfare systems who identify as LGBTQ+. Specific knowledge of the settings and situations where LGBTQ+ young people reside and/or are provided services (in-home versus out-of-home care) as well as a discussion about foster care and adoption by LGBT families is critical for understanding the complexity of these people’s lives and situations. Further, sexual orientation and gender identity expression variables intersect with other conditions, such as race/class/ethnicity. These intersections add to the complexity of the LGBTQ+ person’s life and experiences in child welfare systems. As youth who self-identify as LGBTQ+ experience both oppression and resilience in a range of systems, including the family of origin system, so too do families who identify as LGBTQ+ and wish to become foster or adoptive parents. The decision to self-identify and “come out,” the experience of historical and psychological trauma, the degree of social supports, and health and mental health status are some of the issues and barriers many LGBTQ+ individuals experience and overcome as they interface with child welfare systems. Interventions at the clinical level can move youth toward health, while interventions at the macro level can assuage the systemic discrimination and bias that has been present in many child welfare systems. Social workers and child welfare professionals can avail themselves to key journal articles and texts for the latest knowledge and advocacy efforts. Additionally, there are many organizations that provide digital and in-person education, family support, and legal advocacy for the LGBTQ+ youth and families in child welfare systems. Social workers and child welfare professionals are on the frontlines and behind the scenes with their work with the LGBTQ+ youth and families in child welfare. They have an ethical imperative to work to provide support, healing, and advocacy. It my hope that the bibliography will be useful to social workers and child welfare professionals in this endeavor.

Foundational Works

These texts and articles are among the classics that inform child welfare practice with LGBTQ+ youth and families. Steinhorn 1979 provided the earliest account of this phenomenon in the professional literature. Malyon 1981 offered a strong practice-based framework for exploring the experiences of “homosexual” youth. Herdt 1989, an edited volume on gay youth, delivered a comprehensive overview of the range of issues affecting these young people. The authors of Ricketts and Achtenberg 1990 were the first to write about lesbian and gay foster care and adoption. In a groundbreaking colloquium sponsored and supported by the Child Welfare League of America, a group of child welfare policymakers and practitioners from across the United States came together for the first time to discuss the role that child welfare agencies played in serving the needs of gay and lesbian young people in child welfare settings (Child Welfare League of America 1991). Similarly, Child Welfare Administration & Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies 1994 and Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto 1995 stem from gatherings of child welfare professionals in New York City and Toronto to examine how they could make child welfare services more accessible and responsive to gay and lesbian youth in their systems. G. P. Mallon was the first to systematically research and explore the experiences of gay and lesbian youth in child welfare systems in the United States and Canada (Mallon 1992 and Mallon 1998). Collectively, these youth- and child welfare–focused publications, written by academics and practitioners who in many cases took tremendous professional risks in researching and writing about these issues which were at the time considered to be “taboo” topics for scholarship, provide accounts of the histories of the LGBTQ+ child welfare population spanning the decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In identifying their work here, we honor the courage that it took for them as practitioners, scholars, and academics to carefully tell the stories that needed to be told and to produce rigorous, peer-reviewed scholarship that set the foundation for this work, which mattered then and has endured until today. It is also possible by reviewing these earlier works to bear witness to the progression of language used by academics to describe the experiences of the population—from homosexual to gay; to gay and lesbian; to lesbian and gay; to lesbian, gay, and bisexual; and later in this publication and in the trajectory of this work, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender; to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning; to LGBTQ, and finally to LGBTQ+ or in some cases to LGBTQIA. Although Mallon 1999 was the first work about social services for transgender youth, it must be noted in this foundational section that there is a paucity of information on transgender and nonbinary youth as well as works focusing on LGBTQ+ youth of color. Indeed, much of the initial work on this population was, and still is, focused on sexual orientation rather than gender identity expression and on people of white, European descent.

• Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto. 1995. We are your children too: Accessible child welfare services for lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. Toronto: Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto.

  A study conducted in Toronto by the Children’s Aid Society, one of the first to explore the accessibility issues for LGBTQ+ youth in child welfare systems in Canada.

• Child Welfare Administration & Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, eds. 1994. Improving services to gay and lesbian youth in New York City’s child welfare system. New York: Child Welfare Administration and Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies.

  This publication is the proceedings from a group of child welfare professionals called together by the NYC Administration for Children’s Services to examine ways that services could be improved for gay and lesbian youth in child welfare agencies in New York City. The publication offered a synthesis of the issues and recommendations for improving practice with gay and lesbian youth.

• Child Welfare League of America. 1991. Serving the needs of gay and lesbian youths: The role of child welfare agencies, recommendations of a colloquium, Washington, DC, 25–26 January 1991. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.

  This publication is the proceedings from a colloquium called by the leaders of the Child Welfare League of America and one of the first to gather a national group to explore, discuss, and examine the issues of gay and lesbian youth and the role that child welfare agencies should play in providing services for these young people. A groundbreaking report.

• Herdt, G. 1989. Gay and lesbian youth. New York: Harrington Park Press.

  One of the first books to explore the experiences of gay and lesbian youth; an edited volume.

• Mallon, G. P. 1992. Gay and no place to go: Serving the needs of gay and lesbian youth in out-of-home care settings. Child Welfare 71.6: 547–557.

  After Steinhorn 1979, the second peer-reviewed article published in a professional journal about the needs of gay and lesbian youth in child welfare settings.

• Mallon, G. P. 1998. We don’t exactly get the welcome wagon: The experiences of gay and lesbian adolescents in child welfare systems. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

  The first research study that examined and explored the experiences of lesbian and gay youth in the New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto child welfare systems.

• Mallon, G. P., ed. 1999. Social services with transgendered youth. New York: Haworth Press.

  The first book to examine the experiences of transgender youth through a social work lens.

• Malyon, A. K. 1981. The homosexual adolescent: Developmental issues and social bias. Child Welfare League of America 60.5: 321–330.

  One of the first peer-reviewed publications that provided a professional and gay-affirming framework for examining the “homosexual adolescent.”

• Ricketts, W., and R. A. Achtenberg. 1990. Adoption and foster parenting for lesbians and gay men: Creating new traditions in family. Marriage and Family Review 14.3–4: 83–118.

  The first published book which addressed the then very controversial subject of adoption and foster parenting by lesbians and gay men.

• Steinhorn, A. 1979. Lesbian adolescents in residential treatment. Social Casework: The Journal of Contemporary Social Work 60:494–498.

  DOI: 10.1177/104438947906000807

  The first, and for many years the only, peer-reviewed article in a professional journal which examined the experiences of lesbians in a residential child welfare facility.