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Most child welfare systems are ill-equipped to affirm and support the multifaceted identity of youth of color who identify as LGBTQ whose whole identities include, among other characteristics, their race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability and immigration status. Separately and together, these identities are often subjected to bias, discrimination and current and historical oppression by communities and public systems. This article builds on current best practice standards for serving youth who identify as LGBTQby focusing on strategies, developed with input from young people, for ensuring safety and healthy development, promoting well-being, committing to permanency, and fostering agency accountability.
Systems often do not identify and genuinely engage with youth of color who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) and/or are gender expansive,1 who are not only disproportionately represented in systems of out-of-home care but also experience disparately poor outcomes. A forthcoming study using data from the nationally representative National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II (NSCAW-II) estimates that approximately 15.5% of children in out-of-home care identified as LGB. These numbers are even starker when disaggregated by race, with data indicating that more than half (61.8%) of all children in out-of-home care who identify as LGB are youth of color (Dettlaff, Washburn, Vogel, & Carr, 2017). Further, these data likely underestimate the true prevalence of youth who identify as LGBTQ in out-of-home care as this study does not include youth who may identify as transgender or gender expansive or who are not comfortable sharing their identity. When compared to their heterosexual, cisgender, and White peers, these young people are more likely to experience family rejection, be placed in congregate care settings, experience housing instability and homelessness, face poor education outcomes and become involved with youth probation (Page, 2017; Wilson, Cooper, Kastanis, & Nezhad, 2014).
While these young people often face overt bias and discrimination in out-of-home care, they also face the effects of implicit bias on service provision across systems of care. Implicit bias, or socialized attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously affect an individual's understanding, actions and decisions-including perceptions of age, innocence, and sexuality-permeates all levels of service provision and plays a role at every decision point across the continuum of system involvement (Staats, 2014). For example, research shows that Black...