BY ALL ACCOUNTS gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youths comprise a disproportionate number of at-risk youths across the U.S. They are substantially more likely than are straight youths to experience homelessness, whether because they run away or because they’re forced to leave home by their families. They’re more likely to attempt suicide and more likely to commit truancy or to drop out of high school altogether to avoid an intolerable situation.
While exact numbers are often hard to come by, studies going back to the 1980’s have generally found that between 25 and forty percent of homeless and runaway youths are GLBT-identified
(the numbers vary by region and by methodology). For example, in a fairly recent survey of social service agencies in large U.S. cities, agents in Los Angeles estimated that between 25 and 35 percent of street kids were gay, while those in Seattle pegged the figure at forty percent. The National Network of Runaway and Youth Services has estimated that twenty to forty percent of youths who become homeless each year are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Assuming GLBT youths comprise somewhere between five and ten percent of all young people, all of these estimates indicate that these youths are greatly over-represented in the whole population of at-risk youths. It is of course not their sexual orientation per se but instead the homophobia to which they’re subjected that makes for an intolerable home situation and paves the path to homelessness. And while being gay is the common denominator of this group of youths, their sexual orientation intersects a number of other factors—race, ethnicity, class, access to resources, and prior system involvement—in determining whether GLBT youths find themselves in a safe and loving home or on the street. Young people who have support from even one adult, whether a teacher, a mentor, or a relative, show significantly greater levels of coping ability and resilience than those who do not. Young people who end up living on the streets have typically experienced homophobia in multiple environments. Having grown up in a family and community that rejected them and destroyed their self-esteem, they’re often made to endure homophobia from adults who are meant to provide care. A young person could end up on the streets for any number of reasons; it is common to assume that youngsters who are homeless have been kicked out of their home after coming out, or that they’re running away for fear of being the victim of homophobic attacks from family members or at school. While this is the case for some, another segment of youths who are especially at risk are those who become involved with a department of social services or the juvenile justice system as a result of any number of factors—substance abuse (by oneself or by family members), domestic violence, school truancy, being a victim of neglect, the death of a parent, among others—and then slipping through the cracks in the system. In situations where young people are removed from their homes for any of these reasons due to ongoing concern for their well-being, they’re usually placed in the child welfare system under the care of a state’s department of social services. The general mandate for social workers is to place these youths in the least restrictive and most supportive environment that they can find. Sometimes this means finding a foster family, a group home, or other residential placement. There is typically a dearth of available foster families in the system to begin with, and few are willing to work with young people who have emotional or behavioral problems. Fewer still are interested in fostering GLBT youths, many of whom arrive with emotional and behavioral issues as a result of the homophobia they’ve endured. Those who are not matched with a family are placed in a residential program, group home, or independent living program. Staff people who work in these environments, like most human service professionals, rarely have training or experience in GLBT issues and are often unprepared to serve the youths in their care. Sometimes there’s outright homophobia in residential programs, including both verbal and physical harassment, which can become so unbearable that gay youths feel safer living on the streets than in the home to which they’ve been assigned. The lack of safe and supportive services available to GLBT youths is something that governments and service agencies need to address. In Massachusetts, the largest agency serving at-risk youths is the Home for Little Wanderers, where I serve as glbtq Training Manager. Founded in 1799, the Home has been one of the most effective child service agencies in the U.S., with a staff of over 700 people working in twenty distinct programs and serving many thousands of children and families every year. The mission of the Home is to ensure the healthy emotional, mental, and social development of children at risk, their families, and their communities. We do this through an integrated system of prevention, advocacy, research, and direct care services. The Home, while a traditional social service agency in some respects, has over time developed a steadfast commitment to providing services specifically tailored to GLBT clients. More recently, the Home has taken the lead in developing an approach to training social service providers who work with this clientele, one that has received national attention. Over the years the Home has developed a number of programs to serve the GLBT population, including Healthy Strong and Proud, Tobacco Education for Gay & Lesbian Youth (tegly), Different Directions, and the Waltham House group home. Healthy Strong and Proud, an HIV prevention and education program, and tegly’s tobacco education program both employ GLBT youths to conduct outreach and provide information to their peers. Different Directions, a component of the Child and Family Counseling Center, provides individual and group outpatient counseling, psychological and neuropsychological testing, and medication evaluation, prescription, and follow-up services for its clients. The Home hired a dedicated director to oversee these programs, to support the internal work with clients throughout the agency, and to develop further services to meet the needs of the GLBT youth in out-of-home care. The newest and perhaps the most groundbreaking of all of its services, Waltham House, is a group home for GLBT youths from age fourteen to eighteen. When it opened, Waltham House was the first residence of its kind in New England and the only group home to exist for this population outside New York and Los Angeles. Waltham House opened its doors in October of 2002. Despite its nationally unique status, two months later it was serving only four clients and lacked incoming referrals, so we made outreach a priority. We were hearing horrendous stories from the teens in our care about their experiences, often about being bounced from placement to placement within the child welfare system and encountering homophobia from many of the adults charged with their care. Given the research showing that GLBT youths are disproportionately represented in state systems, it was clear that we were not connecting with the enormous number of kids we knew were living in silence. We determined from talking with young people and their social workers that most adults did not have the skills or resources to talk openly with teens about sexual orientation, let alone understand why a gay youth might not be safe in many well-regarded programs. In the past, homeless GLBT youths and those “in the system” have often been paired with adults who make placement decisions without the knowledge of this population that would allow them to make appropriate recommendations. Many youths were not even identified as such by case workers. And even when young people felt safe enough to come out to their case worker, the latter often didn’t have the resources needed to research the various options to ensure placement in a supportive environment. The Home for Little Wanderers recognized that our practice of educating all of our employees about GLBT issues could be extended to other providers for the benefit of all. We applied for and received funding from the Tides Foundation to develop a training model for use with social workers in Massachusetts. The Department of Social Services was a willing partner in this effort. In the end, the Home’s team of trainers educated nearly 2,000 social workers, lawyers, case managers, administrators, policy makers, and family stabilization units about GLBT youth issues. The training curriculum led participants through a series of interactive exercises on topics such as the power of language and terminology, the connection between identity and behavior, and an analysis of current research findings on GLBT youth. Discussions were conducted about local resources and practical strategies for communicating openly and respectfully with all youths on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. As a result of this training and the uniqueness of Waltham House, the Home quickly came to be viewed, both locally and nationally, as a leader in GLBT youth issues. In response to the training initiative, the Home witnessed a dramatic increase in inquiries about providing further training, offering consultation on clients in therapeutic settings, conducting staff development on GLBT issues in schools, and accepting client referrals to Waltham House, along with numerous requests for more information about starting up programs similar to Waltham House. It became evident that in order to meet the demand and fill the training gap that clearly exists, the Home would need to create a full time staff position dedicated to training and consultation on these issues. The position, GLBT Training Manager, now focuses on responding to external requests for training, public speaking, and consultation on both a local and national level. At Waltham House we sometimes claim that we will have been successful when we put ourselves out of business, which will happen when all residential programs and schools are safe for GLBT youth and programs like Waltham House are no longer needed. Until then, it is essential that young people be provided with services that can meet their social, emotional, and physical needs. Accomplishing this will entail opening more GLBT-centered programming in other states, assisting traditional and mainstream human service agencies to make their programming GLBT-friendly, and, most importantly, educating people about the harmful and pervasive effects of homophobia and the havoc it can wreak on the lives of young people. It is our hope that professionals in all areas of human services will incorporate anti-homophobia and GLBT issues training into their professional development tracks and credentialing. If academic institutions offering degrees in psychology, sociology, education, and criminal justice provided opportunities for students to learn about GLBT identity and development, professionals in these fields would be better prepared to provide safe and supportive services to all of their clients, including one that has all too often been inadequately served in the past. Colby Berger is GLBTQ Training Manager at the Home for Little Wanderers in Boston.
