We are proud to announce Children’s Home and LSS were recognized in Celebrating Everyday Change-Makers in Child Welfare. This first-of-its-kind report highlights more than 70 child-welfare agencies across the country that partnered with the HRC Foundation’s All Children – All Families (ACAF) project to improve the services they provide to the LGBTQ community, including children in foster care and prospective foster and adoptive parents.
We conducted an internal self-assessment, provided professional development to staff and implemented ACAF’s “Benchmarks of LGBTQ Inclusion,” which track policy and practice changes within agencies. Celebrating Everyday Change-Makers features three “Tiers of Recognition,” which celebrate the strides agencies have made toward becoming fully LGBTQ welcoming and affirming.
This work could not be more important. LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in foster care and face increased risk of both negative experiences and outcomes:
- Up to 30% of youth in foster care are LGBTQ.
- LGBTQ youth are twice as likely to report being treated poorly as their non-LGBTQ peers while in care.
- LGBTQ youth have a greater average number of placements than their non-LGBTQ peers.
- LGBTQ youth are more likely than their non-LGBTQ peers to be placed in congregate care including group homes.
Since 2007, hundreds of child-welfare agencies across the United States have used ACAF’s resources to enhance their efforts to achieve safety, permanency and well-being for LGBTQ youth and families. This new effort marks a major step toward improving the services provided to LGBTQ youth and prospective parents.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is the educational arm of America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.
