Washington, D.C. — The Center for American Progress, in partnership with the Family Equality Council’s Every Child Deserves A Family Campaign, is announcing a new project to raise awareness about discrimination against both LGBTQ parents and children in the foster care and adoption system.
The storytelling project, known as Welcoming All Families, allows people to share their stories about being turned away by an adoption placement agency due to their LGBTQ identity.
The project comes as a growing number of states are allowing child placement agencies to reject otherwise qualified LGBTQ parents based on religious objections.
Estimates suggest that there may be more than 440,000 children currently in the foster care systems nationwide, 117,000 of whom are currently waiting for adoption. States’ child welfare systems are often overwhelmed, and more than 20,000 children age out of the system each year without finding the forever family they need.
Through the project’s website—Welcomingallfamilies.org—LGBTQ families can report instances in which they have been turned away because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It also provides a forum for adoptees or current or former foster youth who have experienced LGBTQ discrimination in foster care.
“This project will place a spotlight on the issue of anti-LGBTQ discrimination in our nation’s child welfare systems, a topic that too often lacks coverage,” said Frank J. Bewkes, policy analyst for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at CAP. “Thousands of children age out of the foster care system each year without a forever family and overly broad religious exemption laws only increase the difficulty of finding these young people loving homes.”
Visit the website: Welcomingallfamilies.org
For more information on this topic or to speak to an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at [email protected] or 202.478.6327.