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This study documents the child welfare experiences of youth who are LGBTQ and their perspectives on how these experiences influenced their housing instability and homelessness. Youth detailed incidents of gender segregation, stigmatization, isolation, and institutionalization in child welfare systems that they linked to their gender expression and sexuality, which often intersected with being a youth of color. The youth described these incidents as contributing to multiple placements and shaping why they experienced homelessness.
Annually, around 1.6 to 2 million youth, aged 12 to 24 years old, experience homelessness each year in the United States (Gibson, 2011; Karabanow, 2004; Witkin et al., 2005). Youth who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ ) are estimated to make up at least 40% of this population of youth experiencing homelessness, despite being about 5-8% of the general U.S. youth population (Durso and Gates, 2012; Ray, 2006). A main pathway into youth homelessness is aging out of government programs (Gibson, 2011; Thompson, Bender, Windsor, Cook, & Williams, 2010), and youth who are LGBTQmay also be over-represented within child welfare systems (Van Leeuwen et al., 2006). A 2014 report found that almost 20% of youth in Los Angeles child welfare systems identified as LGBTQ(Wilson, Cooper, Kastanis, & Nezhad, 2014).
Given these findings, I ask: How do youth who are LGBTQ and are experiencing homelessness perceive how child welfare systems shaped their pathways into homelessness? To address this question, this study presents qualitative findings from youth who are LGBTQand experiencing homelessness to document their accounts of being in child welfare systems. I specifically attend to the ways in which the youth discussed how their gender expression and its intersections with sexuality and race shaped experiences of gender segregation and instability within child welfare systems and how these experiences may contribute to experiencing homelessness.
Background
Youth who are LGBTQ are likely to experience multiple placements while in child welfare systems and to be placed in congregate care settings (Elze, 2014; Mallon, Aledort, & Ferrera, 2002). Congregate care settings are often unsafe for youth who are LGBTQ, whereby they are susceptible to victimization (Elze, 2014; Marksamer, 2011). Youth in congregate care are also less likely to achieve placement permanency (Elze, 2014; Jacobs & Freundlich, 2006). In effect, multiple placements and experiences...