LGBTQ Youth in the MA Child Welfare System
Drawn from national research, public records, and interviews with service providers, child welfare professionals, foster parents, and youth and young adults with lived experience of Department of Children and Families (DCF) involvement, the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth’s report highlights alarming structural failures for LGBTQ youth including:
Failure to keep LGBTQ foster youth safe and to protect them from violence, abuse, and risks associated with intimate partner violence and exploitation, particularly for youth in group care settings
Inappropriate placements and frequent moves, including failure to place transgender youth according to their gender identity
Long delays in accessing medically necessary care
Barriers to education
An insufficient number and a lack of tracking of LGBTQ affirming foster homes
As the report demonstrates through the voices of young people and their advocates, the harm from these failures is profound. It also falls particularly heavily on transgender and Black and brown LGBQ youth, who encounter disparate access to resources and persistent biases throughout the child welfare system.
