San Francisco partners with gay friendly adoption agency
SF partners with gay friendly adoption agency
by Roger Brigham
San Francisco is partnering with an Oakland-based nonprofit agency in an effort to find more LGBT couples to adopt queer youth.
The program, called "No Place Like Home," will help Family Builders By Adoption, which trains couples suitable for adoption on how to handle special needs children, to work with the city's Department of Human Services to find permanent homes for LGBTQ children who are in the foster care system. Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders, said she hoped the program would be able to find homes for 10 to 20 children its first year using existing funds.
The program was announced Monday, March 27 at a City Hall news conference with Mayor Gavin Newsom, Supervisor Bevan Dufty, and Jacobs.
Jacobs said the program was necessary because the foster care system has not fulfilled the implicit promise it makes to LGBTQ youths in its programs who are seeking stability and safety from abuse, hostility, and abandonment.
"We have failed," she said. "We have not kept our promise. Many tell us they would rather sleep on the streets because they feel safer on the streets. Many believe nobody would care for them. Beginning today, we're planning to change that belief."
In addition, Jacobs said the foster care system had not done a good job of reuniting LGBTQ youth with their birth families and offering counseling to those families. "Reunification is part of our mission and we haven't been doing it with LGBTQ youths," she said.
DHS regularly places many children with gay and lesbian couples. Under the new program, Dufty said he and other city officials would talk with organizations in the gay community to actively encourage couples to join the foster care system and consider becoming adoptive parents. Family Builders would provide training for the couples so they will be aware of and able to handle the special needs of LGBTQ youth.
Jacobs also said Family Builders had just completed a training session for transgender parents and would try to tap into that population base.
Danielle Thompson was one of the more than 10,000 children in the Bay Area foster system nine years ago after her grandmother died. Since then she has been through a variety of group and foster homes and attended 35 schools.
What she wanted was stability and acceptance. She came out at the age of 15 and reached out to a social worker. Now 20, she considers him her father.
"I knew that when I 'aged out' of the system, I would have his support and his stability," Thompson said. "He reached out an extra hand to me. I want every kid to have that."
Monday's announcement comes against the backdrop of the national debate about gay adoptions, which has kicked up in recent weeks with the Vatican's pronouncement that gay adoptions are "gravely immoral" and "do violence" to children.
Mark Randall, who with his partner Chris Saldivar adopted their son George about one and a half years ago, found those remarks personally offensive.
"I felt it to be such a cruel lie," said Randall, who serves on Family Builders' board of directors. "There's no basis for it. It's a raw, unsupported belief. These kids need homes. You think that [the Vatican] would find homes for these kids before spouting off."
Currently, there are 16 states considering bans on gay adoptions despite anecdotal evidence of their benefits and a rising body of studies to support gay adoptions.
A bill currently pending in the state Assembly, AB2130, would require courts to consider the "religious, cultural, moral, and ethnic values" of a child's birth parents before placing the child for adoption. Thus, the prejudice of a non-supporting parent could prevent the offspring from being adopted by an LGBT couple.
The bill is a "cynical attempt to divide and discriminate at a time when we should come together and focus on the best interests of all California children," said Seth Kilbourn, Equality California's political director.
EQCA has opposed the legislation.
A study released within the past week by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that there is no child-centered reason to prevent gays and lesbians from becoming adoptive parents and that laws and policies that preclude adoption by gay or lesbian parents disadvantage the tens of thousands of children mired in the foster care system who need permanent, loving homes.
"The bottom line for those of us who advocate for children is clear," said Adam Pertman, executive director of the institute. "There's simply no credible research to indicate that children are harmed in any way when they're adopted by gay and lesbian parents, but there's lots of evidence to indicate that they do well in those homes."
Randall said when he and Saldivar first adopted George, they were skeptical when they were told that in the long run they would be the real beneficiaries of the arrangement. Six months later, they were completely sold and found themselves in many ways identifying more with other parents than they did with other gay men.
"I will never be bored," Randall said. "I can't imagine what I had to think about before George came along.
"Plus, there is the satisfaction of doing something that is so completely good. There are few things in life that can compare in satisfaction."
