Lesbian and Gay Youth Issues


Book Description

This book is designed to help youth care providers increase their knowledge and skills in working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (GLBTQ) youth and their families in a variety of settings. In an easy-to-read question-and-answer format, the book provides basic information about working with this often invisible population and focuses on important issues surrounding the coming out process; family relations; discrimination and antigay violence; creating healthy social environments for GLBTQ youth; relationships and dating; and an array of specific, unique issues for GLBTQ youth and youth workers who work with them in residential, school, health, and mental health settings. It also contains a resource list of readings, videos, websites, and program services.




Handbook of Foster Youth


Book Description

Currently, there are over 400,000 youth living in foster care in the United States, with over 20,000 aging out of the child welfare system each year. Foster youth are more prone to experience short- and long-term adverse developmental outcomes including diminished academic achievement and career opportunities, poor mental and overall health, financial struggles, homelessness, early sexual intercourse, and substance abuse, many of these outcomes are risk factors for involvement in the juvenile justice system. Despite their challenges, foster youth have numerous strengths and positive assets that carry them through their journeys, helping them to overcome obstacles and build resilience. The Handbook of Foster Youth brings together a prominent group of multidisciplinary experts to provide nuanced insights on the complex dynamics of the foster care system, its impact on youth’s lives, and the roles of institutions and policies in the foster system. It discusses current gaps and future directions as well as recommendations to advance the field. This book provides an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges and strengths of foster youth and the child welfare system, and the combined efforts of caregivers, community volunteers, policy makers, and the professionals and researchers who work with them.




Coming Out to the Streets


Book Description

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth are disproportionately represented in the U.S. youth homelessness population. In Coming Out to the Streets, Brandon Andrew Robinson examines their lives. Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in central Texas, Coming Out to the Streets looks into the LGBTQ youth's lives before they experience homelessness—within their families, schools, and other institutions—and later when they navigate the streets, deal with police, and access shelters and other services. Through this documentation, Brandon Andrew Robinson shows how poverty and racial inequality shape the ways that the LGBTQ youth negotiate their gender and sexuality before and while they are experiencing homelessness. To address LGBTQ youth homelessness, Robinson contends that solutions must move beyond blaming families for rejecting their child. In highlighting the voices of the LGBTQ youth, Robinson calls for queer and trans liberation through systemic change.




The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook


Book Description

How can you build unshakable confidence and resilience in a world still filled with ignorance, inequality, and discrimination? The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook will teach you how to challenge internalized negative messages, handle stress, build a community of support, and embrace your true self. Resilience is a key ingredient for psychological health and wellness. It’s what gives people the psychological strength to cope with everyday stress, as well as major setbacks. For many people, stressful events may include job loss, financial problems, illness, natural disasters, medical emergencies, divorce, or the death of a loved one. But if you are queer or gender non-conforming, life stresses may also include discrimination in housing and health care, employment barriers, homelessness, family rejection, physical attacks or threats, and general unfair treatment and oppression—all of which lead to overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. So, how can you gain resilience in a society that is so often toxic and unwelcoming? In this important workbook, you’ll discover how to cultivate the key components of resilience: holding a positive view of yourself and your abilities; knowing your worth and cultivating a strong sense of self-esteem; effectively utilizing resources; being assertive and creating a support community; fostering hope and growth within yourself, and finding the strength to help others. Once you know how to tap into your personal resilience, you’ll have an unlimited well you can draw from to navigate everyday challenges. By learning to challenge internalized negative messages and remove obstacles from your life, you can build the resilience you need to embrace your truest self in an imperfect world.




Safe Space


Book Description

This document presents the Queer Students of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation's (QSAPP) research into housing for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness in New York City. Based at Columbia GSAPP, QSAPP's interdisciplinary project looks at this issue from the various disciplines of the built environment represented at the school: architecture, real estate, planning, and preservation. The book draws on a range of sources--including data from government and social service organizations, operating models of existing organizations in New York, and interviews with service providers and experts in the field--and perspectives in sociology, public health, and advocacy. Funding is often cited as one of the biggest barriers to solving this housing crisis, but an analysis of funding models and strategies does not currently exist. In addition, housing is a design problem but there are no published reports that analyze LGBTQ youth housing from a spatial perspective. QSAPP hopes that by visualizing this issue and highlighting ways in which these shelters fit into specific planning and real estate systems in the city, we can further shed light on the specific needs of LGBTQ youth and help advise on ways forward with these concerns in mind.




We Don't Exactly Get the Welcome Wagon


Book Description

Drawing on over twenty years of child welfare experience and extensive interviews with 54 gay and lesbian young people who lived in out-of-home-care child welfare settings in three North American cities--Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto--Gerald Mallon presents narratives of marginalized young people trying to find the "right fit." Mallon permits the voices of these young people to guide the research, allowing them to tell their own stories and to suggest what is important in their own words. Their experiences help the reader to begin to understand the discrepancies between the myths and misinformation about gay and lesbian adolescents and their realities in the out-of-home child welfare systems in which they live. The first comprehensive examination of the experiences of gay and lesbian youths in the child welfare system, We Don't Exactly Get the Welcome Wagon makes solid recommendations to social work practitioners as well as to policy makers about how they can provide a competent practice for gay and lesbian adolescents, and offers a methods chapter which will be useful in classroom instruction.




Contemporary Issues in Child Welfare Practice


Book Description

Child welfare is the oldest specialization within social work practice and the only specialty area in which social work is the host profession. This edited volume provides a unique and comprehensive overview of practice issues relevant to contemporary child welfare professionals entering the field as well as those already working in direct service and management positions. This book’s emphasis on systemic, integrated, and evidence-informed practices at the individual, family, and organizational level is in keeping with child welfare’s core mission of child protection, family support, and permanency for youth. This volume also explores the challenges and opportunities present in a contemporary practice environment, which are driven by the attainment of defined outcomes, fiscal limitations, and the need for an informed professionalized child welfare workforce.




No House to Call My Home


Book Description

A deep and intimate look at the lives of LGBTQ youth in foster care, vividly chronicling their struggles, fears and hardships, and revealing the force that allows them to carry on: the irrepressible power of hope. In this lyrical debut, Ryan Berg immerses readers in the gritty, dangerous, and shockingly underreported world of homeless LGBTQ teens in New York. As a caseworker in a group home for disowned LGBTQ teenagers, Berg witnessed the struggles, fears, and ambitions of these disconnected youth as they resisted the pull of the street, tottering between destruction and survival. Focusing on the lives and loves of eight unforgettable youth, No House to Call My Home traces their efforts to break away from dangerous sex work and cycles of drug and alcohol abuse, and, in the process, to heal from years of trauma. From Bella's fervent desire for stability to Christina's irrepressible dreams of stardom to Benny's continuing efforts to find someone to love him, Berg uncovers the real lives behind the harrowing statistics: over 4,000 youth are homeless in New York City -- 43 percent of them identify as LGBTQ. Through these stories, Berg compels us to rethink the way we define privilege, identity, love, and family. Beyond the tears, bluster, and bravado, he reveals the force that allows them to carry on -- the irrepressible hope of youth.




Family Pride


Book Description

An invaluable portrait and roadmap on how to thrive as an LGBT family The overwhelming success of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” YouTube project aimed at queer youth highlighted that despite the progress made in gay rights, LGBT people are still at high risk of being victimized. While the national focus remains on the mistreatment of gay people in schools, the reality is that LGBT families also face hostility in various settings—professional, recreational, and social. This is especially evident in rural communities, where the majority of LGBT families live, isolated from support networks more commonly found in urban spaces. Family Pride is the first book for queer parents, families, and allies that emphasizes community safety. Drawing on his years as a dedicated community activist and on the experiences of LGBT parents, Michael Shelton offers concrete strategies that LGBT families can use to intervene in and resolve difficult community issues, teach their children resiliency skills, and find safe and respectful programs for their children.