Support once afforded LGBTQ+ foster kids has vanished and a culture of silence has blanketed the agency tasked with raising children growing up in the system.
Isabella Morningstar talks with Marcus Anthony, a case manager at Thrive Youth Center in San Antonio as he looks for an update on her new birth certificate. After she aged out of the foster care system in 2020, she had a difficult time updating her paperwork to reflect her legal name and gender marker.
Yet Texas’ Child Protective Services doesn’t track the sexual orientation or gender identity of youth in foster care. And as state leaders prioritized legislating everything from transgender kids’ access to certain health care and the places drag queens can perform, they also quietly stalled efforts to better train adults charged with caring for trans foster youth.
Trans Texans, though, say those attempts further marginalize an already vulnerable part of the population. And for trans people who age out of the foster care system, that kind of stigma worsens an already tenuous struggle to build an adult life without the kind of familial, financial and social support upon which most young adults depend.
“You cannot come to a person who has this part of their identity that has substantially impacted their life and tell them, ‘Well we’re not going to talk about that,’” Mehrhof said. “You’re asking them to either hide or deny part of who they are.”Isabella Morningstar was 14 when her adoptive mother of nearly a decade refused to let the teenager continue living with her — a decision that kick-started a cycle of displacement.
Over the next four years, the vitriol from adults who were supposed to provide a safe and stable home conditioned Morningstar to expect people around her would put in little effort to understand her. Last week, a federal judge fined the Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees DFPS, $100,000 per day in fines for neglecting investigations into allegations of abuse of children in foster care.
Asher’s dad refused to come to terms with the fact that he had a trans son. Their relationship fell apart, and Asher’s mental health deteriorated with it. That same year, DFPS quietly altered their Foster Care Bill of Rights, a document outlining how children should be treated in the state’s care. The agency, whose top official is appointed by the governor, removed mentions of protections specific to gender identity and sexual orientation.
But while Asher was settling into his new life in Austin, lawmakers returned to the Capitol for the 2021 legislative session. They tried unsuccessfully to ban transition-related care for adolescents or classify it as child abuse. Social workers rallied against the bill that tried to label such care as child abuse, arguing that it would remove transgender children from their homes and force them into the foster care system.
“No emails or texts allowed,” Patricia Salinas, then the Child Protective Investigations director for the agency, wrote to DFPS employees. The brief period of stability went out the window after a few years due to mistreatment by her family forcing her to move out. She shuffled between temporary housing and hotels until last year, when she was connected to Thrive Youth Center, a nonprofit that provides housing for LGBTQ+ young people that helped Morningstar relocate to San Antonio.
The youth Thrive works with, Hixon said, often bounced around institutions where they didn’t build a strong relationship with a primary caregiver, so many never learned basic skills needed to live independently.Despite not having that stable foundation, Morningstar is trying her best. Eight years ago, Denise, the Houston caseworker, received training on how to care for LGBTQ+ youth. She lauded the training — and hearing the experiences of transgender youth she worked with. Both helped her better understand trans kids, something she said is important so the youth can open up and build trust with the adult tasked with caring for them.
In May 2020, the LGBTQ+ Child Welfare Workgroup — made up of social workers, lawyers and child advocates who work with Texas foster youth — sent Masters, the DFPS head at the time, a draft of the guide. But for over two years, the draft sat untouched. Stephanie Muth replaced Masters as head of the agency in November 2022.
Adam McCormick, an associate professor of social work at St. Edward’s University in Austin, has conducted hundreds of interviews with foster alumni. He said the state has systematically eliminated a support system for these kids who are already struggling with the pain of rejection from their families.
Demographics Politics State Government Child Protective Services Department Of Family And Protective Services Greg Abbott Ken Paxton LGBTQ 88Th Legislative Session Texas Legislature
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