The state is not only willing, but eager to work with LGBTQ couples as foster parents
Growing up LGBTQ can be tough. For kids growing up Oregon’s foster care system, it can be even tougher.
From the time Rickey Bedolla was about 3 years old, he spent most his childhood in one Washington County foster home or another.
As he was becoming a teenager, he’d found a stable placement where he’d stayed for five years.
It was around age 13 that Bedolla began to question his sexual orientation. There was this boy at school, he said, that kind of “sparked it.”
The family he was living with at the time was religious, “but they didn’t force it on you,” he said.
Their brand of faith was better than a family he’d lived with previously, he explained, which “was the forced-upon-religious type of home.”
He’d heard stories about a girl who couldn’t stay at her home after coming out as a lesbian, and he never broached the subject of sexuality with his foster family.
Lucky for Bedolla, his child welfare caseworker noticed he was starting to have identity questions. This caseworker, an employee of Oregon’s Department of Human Services, or DHS, decided to place him with Matthew Fisher and Joe Williams – a gay married couple the caseworker had placed other kids with in the past.
“We were always kind of the go-to with the LGBT youth,” Williams said. “There was obviously a need out there for more, at least just accepting foster parents.”
Sage Dupre, 18, is a bisexual-identified youth who has been in foster care for the past five years. Out of the six placements she’s had, she said, it wasn’t until she was placed at her current LGBTQ-specific foster home in Gresham that she finally felt accepted for who she is.
She said at one home she was in, the foster mother would watch her closely, not allowing her to be alone with girls and scrutinizing her every move. Religion was a factor in that home, but she said part of the problem was that many foster families didn’t know anyone in the LGBTQ community, so they had a hard time understanding her.
Once, she said, she got in trouble for explaining what it meant to be gay to another foster child who had asked her about it.
“It’s been a rough road,” she said.
‘It’s really bad’
Every night, in Multnomah County alone, five to 13 foster kids sleep in hotel rooms because DHS has nowhere else to put them, said Melissa Masserant, a foster and adoption trainer for DHS’s child welfare division.
“It’s really bad. Across the board, we’re in need of more foster families,” Masserant said. “It’s not just Multnomah County; it’s a need across the state. But we are putting special emphasis on trying to find homes that are affirming for LGBTQ-identified youth.”
DHS spokesperson Andrea Cantu Schomus said it’s difficult for DHS to measure exactly how many additional foster parents the agency would need to meet the demands of finding placements, as it varies depending on the needs of the kids and where they live.
But in July 2016, Reginald Richardson, deputy director at DHS, reported the agency had lost more than 400 family-run foster beds and 100 residential facility beds in the span of 12 months.
A statewide assessment the same year found the agency had fewer than half the number of homes for foster children than Cantu Schomus said it would ideally have in order to match kids with the right foster families.
Anytime the child welfare system experiences a shortage of foster parents, it exacerbates the difficulties in placing kids who have specific needs, such as LGBTQ youths, said Cari King. King chairs DHS’s PRIDE Employee Resource Group, which was informally established nearly a decade ago. Today it serves as a resource support group for LGBTQ-identified youths’ needs in the foster care system.
One of King’s focuses is recruiting new foster parents from the LGBTQ community.
“We have about two times as many LGBTQ-identified youth in (foster) care as in general population,” King said. “It’s important that we are placing LBGTQ youth in families that are not only just OK with their identity, but affirming.”
That’s one reason DHS will have a booth at this weekend’s Pride Northwest celebration at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, where festivalgoers can learn more about becoming an adoptive or foster parent.
Last year, 40 people who visited the Pride festival booth filled out forms for adopting and fostering youths.
But the booth is also intended to let the LGBTQ community know that in Oregon, they are wanted as foster and adoptive parents.
Child welfare agencies in many states “go back and forth on whether they want to work with LGBTQ couples,” King said. “Not only is Oregon willing, but eager to work with LGBTQ families.”
Like same-sex couples, many people who rent or who are single often assume they are not eligible to become foster parents, Masserant said. But in Oregon, that’s not the case.
But having someone who can accept and support an LGBTQ child’s self-expression in the home can make a big difference in a youth’s life.
Among straight kids, a Human Rights Campaign survey of 10,000 American teenagers found their top problems were issues around college and career, grades and classes and finances related to college or their job.
In contrast, the same survey found that for LGBTQ youths, school bullying, non-accepting families and fear of being out or open topped the list – not that they don’t have all the pressures of graduating high-school and paying for college as well.
For kids growing up LGBTQ in Oregon’s foster care system, a whole additional layer of trauma and family-related problems are piled on.
“We’re looking for people with tools and skills around supporting youth – whether they be within the community or allies. Understanding the nuances of caring for a child who is LGBTQ is important. Especially given the statistics we’ve seen,” King said.
King was referencing the Williams Institute’s Los Angeles Foster Youth Study conducted in 2014.
The study found: “LGBTQ youth have a higher average number of foster care placements and are more likely to be living in a group home. They also reported being treated less well by the child welfare system, were more likely to have been hospitalized for emotional reasons at some point in their lifetime, and were more likely to have been homeless at some point in their life.”
Regardless of religion or personal beliefs, said King, DHS expects all foster families to accept and be affirming of all youths’ identities.
It’s also a stipulation of the Oregon Foster Children’s Bill of Rights. King said when DHS hears a foster parent is discriminating against a foster child, “we try to address that through their certifier.”
‘Honorary family’
Before they were married, Fisher and Williams had discussed their priorities, and kids were not part of the plan. Williams worked as an executive restaurant chef and Fisher as a trial lawyer. Both had busy schedules, and the couple wanted to travel the world, not raise kids.
It was when Fisher had a client who routinely took in LGBTQ youths who had been evicted from their families that the couple began to rethink the possibility of having youths in their home.
“She had commented about there being a tremendous need,” Fisher said.
The couple began to think about taking in wayward teens as a way of giving back to the community.
“We were very specific about wanting roughly high-school age kids that were displaced because of their sexual orientation,” Fisher said.
It was about seven years ago when the couple approached the DHS booth at the Portland Pride festival to find out more about how they could begin to help displaced LGBTQ youths.
They soon took the introductory class, and slowly, they completed the certification process, still weighing their options and deciding whether foster parenting was right for them.
What they discovered was that most teenagers who are evicted for being LGBTQ-identified don’t end up in DHS custody, Fisher said. They began to take in children of all ages, and were often contacted for temporary placement of LGBTQ youths just entering the system.
“What we’ve experienced is there is really a lot of need for people to help trans kids in the community,” Williams said. “We got a lot of phone calls that were either emergency placements or long-term placements, and they were often at times when our home was full.”
Fisher added, “We would often turn kids away because we were focused on the individuals here.”
Today, Williams is a stay-at-home dad, and the couple have an adopted daughter and are in the process of adopting two more kids who came into their lives through foster care.
“We traveled, and we had a great time. We have a whole wall covered with photos of trips we’ve taken all over the world. Now we can’t even go to the theater!” Fisher said with a laugh.
Less than six months after being placed in their home when he was 13, Bedolla came out to Williams and Fisher.
“When he came out of the closet though,” Williams said, “those closet doors, they blew off, and he came out with jazz hands!”
Fisher said if he could dictate a child’s sexual orientation, he would tell them to be straight; it’s much easier.
“We’ve never encouraged someone: ‘Being gay is awesome! You should give it a shot!’ That’s not our job. Our job is to provide a safe and nurturing environment,” he said.
But Fisher and Williams were able to help Bedolla with some of the nuances of coming of age as a gay male.
When Bedolla came home from sexual-education class at school, they asked him if he learned how to use a condom. He hadn’t, so they were there to teach him without judgment.
Fisher said with the prevalence of HIV in the LGBTQ community, it was imperative that Bedolla knew how to be safe, but they made sure he also knew they were not encouraging sexual activity.
“We still refer to it as our ‘banana condom dinner,’” Fisher said.
Now 17, Bedolla lives with his mother. But he says the time he spent living with Williams and Fisher was one of positive growth. He still visits their home in Tigard on a weekly basis.
“He’s honorary family,” Fisher said, to which Bedolla grinned.
The couple have some advice for prospective adoptive and foster parents.
“If there is anyone who is going to read your story and thinks, I have heard horror stories about the foster system, I don’t want to be a part of that, but my husband and I are really interested in adoption,” Fisher said, “I think that you are potentially setting yourself up for failure because you don’t know what you are getting into unless you have at least fostered a couple kids first.”
Williams agreed. He said while foster parenting can be challenging at times, it’s beyond rewarding to see the changes made in kids’ lives.
“We never knew we wanted to be parents until we were parents,” Williams said. “And the foster system led us there.”
Email staff writer Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org; follow her on Twitter @GreenWrites
