In June, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) announced it was beginning to enhance training and services to ensure LGBTQ youth are properly supported and cared for in the state's foster care system.
Several Peoria-area social service agencies provide help and resources to foster care agencies, such as FamilyCore, Camelot Care, and Peoria Proud. They all agree increased training efforts is a huge step in the right direction.
Nicole Livsey, housing navigator for the Heart of Illinois United Way and a board member for Peoria Proud, said foster care placement for LGBTQ youth has become increasingly difficult because youth are becoming more self aware at a younger age.
"A lot of what happens in the foster care system, as you see placements gone wrong. And it's because youth at a younger and younger age are getting comfortable identifying with themselves and how they would like to be treated and how they would like to be called and known as, and it's not always matching with their identity given at birth, whether that's they would rather wear a male clothing when they are anatomically a female or they would like to be called by a different name," Livsey said. "Kids are learning more and more, and the more they learn the more they're kind of becoming more introspective to themselves is what makes them the most comfortable. And that can be very hard for a parent, let alone a foster parent."
Melissa Borders, child welfare director at FamilyCore, said that connecting foster parents and kids with others who have gone through the same process makes the foster care placement process a bit easier for LGBTQ youth.
"But we find that if we provide specialized training, especially something including real-life experiences, such as a foster parent who has parented one of these children before, and can give some advice. That's the kind of training that is really effective, and is really trying to be pulled into our, you know, regular training and kind of day to day life," Borders said.
Michele Gaity, clinical supervisor for Camelot Care in Peoria, said her office has been diligently working to educate and train their staff, as well as their foster parents, on how to create safe and welcoming spaces.
"We've partnered with the Human Rights Campaign. We have a program that's called All Children and Families. And we've become an agency that working with them to ensure that our policies and procedures are in place that we can make sure that our staff, all of our programs in this agency are designed and sufficient for the community, both for our employees and for our youth in care, just so that all of us can have the appropriate languaging," Gaity said. "Just have a better understanding of the LGBTQ community as a whole."
Livsey said young kids are already going through enough changes in their own bodies and throwing in a constant changing environment and a new identity only makes things more difficult for them without the support from someone in their home.
"And we all went through it, right? We all went through peer review, we all understand the changes. And then to not have a stable family to help you navigate everything that is physically going on with you that you have no control over. Imagine then, just adding an additional identity to that. There are additional questions and feeling like you have nowhere to turn. So, I would say ... to anybody interested in being a foster parent, please don't be scared of the LGBT youth populations. They are just trying to explore and be their most authentic selves," Livsey said.
Borders with FamilyCore is encouraged by the number of individuals and organizations who are becoming more open to discussing the issues impacting LGBTQ youth.
"Times are changing, and people are becoming more open. And I think we've seen that, you know, we've seen that in our private agencies and DCFS in our foster parents, and then in the agencies that are providing services to these youth as well," Borders said. "So I think people are more willing to open up and support different things. They're seeing the need, and they're meeting the needs."
Gaity encourages all foster parents to continue to put in the work to remove judgment or biases and to create a space that is welcome to everyone.
"We want our parents to treat all of our youth with compassion and respect. And sometimes that means opening up and learning things maybe that you're unaware of, or maybe need to learn more about," Gaity said. "It means being really curious and open and kind of suspending judgment. It may mean asking for help, or support for yourself, show dignity to the children coming in, you know and know that regardless of how they choose to identify, they're human."
For more information on the foster care system or to get connected with local LGBTQ service agencies, visit FamilyCore or Camelot Care.
