LGBTQIA+ Youth and Families

They deserve to live in communities and environments where they are embraced and can live as their authentic, whole-selves, without fear of harm or reprisal. This includes having meaningful access to affirming resources and public systems that are responsive to their needs.

We know our work is successful when all children, young people, and families can celebrate and live as their authentic, whole-selves without fear of harm, negative repercussions, harassment, or denigration either from society or their families and communities

Our research has helped drive policy and practice changes, including congressional inquiries into harmful practices and supporting LGBTQIA+ youth in legislation. Our work has also spurred state policy changes that have resulted in significant shifts in practices that support LGBTQIA+ youth in jurisdictions as different as Allegheny County, PA and California. To that end, states and other jurisdictions use information from our getREAL network to develop new policies that support LGBTQIA+ and gender-expansive youth in out-of-home care.

We are committed to promoting the healthy development of LGTBQIA+ and gender expansive young people through collaboration and support of the communities in which these young people live, breaking down systems that perpetuate harm on young people, and imagining alternative healing approaches to replace them. We work with young people and communities to identify and advance policy and practice solutions that promote family autonomy, health justice, and economic justice— moving away from policing and surveillance to a healing and just society where communities are well-resourced and designed to support, affirm, and include all young people.

While we work with communities to support and affirm LGBTQIA+ youth, we recognize that we also must work with systems to dismantle systemic racism and transform how they serve, support, and affirm the intersecting identities of young people and families, including LGBTQIA+ youth and their parents.This includes how systems respect, affirm, and support the full, diverse, and unique experiences and identities of LGBTQIA+ people and advance solutions that move away from policing and surveillance to a healing and just society where communities support, affirm, and include all young people and families.

Across our work, we develop and advance solutions with a targeted focus on supporting Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, people with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE), undocumented people, and other communities who have been harmed and excluded by policy. We do this through promoting policies that ensure access to supports needed in communities, so youth and families can thrive outside of the surveillance and intrusion of oppressive and harmful systems. Our approach to policy recognizes and seeks to redress how racism has shaped policy and systems—historically and through the present—to systematically disadvantage people based on their race and other intersecting identities, including gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 

We recognize that, to meaningfully support LGBTQIA+ children and youth, we must redress harms caused by oppressive systems and policies that perpetuate racism, homophobia, and transphobia.