Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. It was near midnight just a couple days before Thanksgiving 2020 when 17-year-old Kayden Asher arrived at yet another temporary home during his yearslong tumble through Texas’ chaotic foster care system.
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.
“Kids are not political pawns,” Asher told The Texas Tribune. “Kids should not be used to score political points, especially foster kids, because our lives are already crap.” Staff at those placements often refused to call Morningstar by her preferred name or allow her to wear feminine clothes. More than once, she was kicked out of group homes for expressing her gender identity.
In November, Morningstar woke up early to get ready for the day. Before enrolling in a cosmetology program at Palo Alto College in San Antonio, she needed to submit documentation to qualify for a scholarship. Foster youth in Texas are eligible for tuition waivers at select state colleges. “The staff didn’t want to deal with us so they put us on a whole bunch of drugs, so we were quiet,” Morningstar said.against the state for violating the constitutional rights of foster children by exposing them to an “unreasonable risk of harm.”
Denise, a Houston-based DFPS caseworker who asked that her full name not be used because she fears retaliation, observed firsthand how rejection from foster families and other adults tasked with caring for LGBTQ+ youth resulted in behavioral issues. She said those youth often say disrespectful, hurtful things and try to intimidate adults supervising them. She said that same behavior prevents the kids from being able to find a permanent home within the foster system.
Thoughts of self harm got so bad, Asher went to a psychiatric hospital. A doctor observed that Asher wasn’t depressed or threatening to harm himself when he was away from home. Morningstar drops off her documentation at Palo Alto College’s financial services office. She has had to jump through multiple hoops to access financial support as a former foster youth because her paperwork was under her name given at birth and not her current legal name.
He said that was especially true of the faith-based placements that pushed church attendance on Asher and his peers. says the some medical transition-related care can reduce distress in some transgender youth, who face higher rates of suicide attempts and mental health problems than their cisgender peers. And medical professionals say trans kids are only provided access to puberty blockers or hormone therapy under the care of doctors and mental health care providers — and with the permission of their parents or legal guardians.
Inside the agency, staffers noted Huffines’ criticism was “starting to blow up” on social media. They quickly removed the Youth Connections website. Staying there meant she had a curfew and restrictions on what she could bring into the facility, like food and beverages. But workers provided educational and career support to residents, along with practical resources like bus passes.
One morning last year, she woke up at 5 a.m. to put on her makeup and get ready for the day. She wanted to look good and be comfortable in her gender expression for her first trip to Palo Alto College, where she will start a cosmetology program this summer. “And if that caseworker is not trained for that, oh my goodness, you can end up with a child on the streets … human trafficked, drug use, major depression,” Denise said.
DFPS declined to respond to a list of questions about the resource guide and other policies the agency has in place to train employees on how to work with LGBTQ+ kids. “We prioritize the inclusivity of all the youth under our care, including those who identify as LGBTQ+,” Denny Marlin, the executive director of marketing and communications for Saint Francis Ministries, said in a statement.
While GOP officials in the state proudly stand behind the recent slate of bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community, Straus, the former House speaker who once helped stall such legislation, recently emerged as a lonely dissenter.at the LBJ School of Public Affairs earlier this month. “Time and time again, they try to find some niche thing they think will play well in the primary when, in my view, it's rooted in just plain indecency.
Texas Foster Care Child Protective Services Thrive Youth Center Texas Republicans Lgbtq Youth Lgbtq Rights Gov Greg Abbott
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