Arizona Mom Opens Group Home For LGBT Foster Youth: “It’s A Big Family”

"They struggle so much in regular group homes," says Jennifer Redmond. “We want them to accept their house as their own.”
From: NewNowNext

 A truly amazing mom has opened a group foster home specifically for gay and trans youth.

“They struggle so much in regular group homes,” Jennifer Redmond of Laveen, Arizona, told Cronkite News.

 After she fostering a lesbian child, the mother of five had her eyes opened to the unique challenges LGBT youth face in the foster care system.

“If you have a transgender male-to-female [child], they are forced to live in a male group home,” she explains. “Maybe they want to wear their hair longer or dress in feminine clothes, but they don’t have the ability to be themselves.”

 To address this dearth of inclusive spaces, Redmond opened her home last year. Within three days, it was completely full.

“It’s a big family. Everybody does stuff together, even my own kids go over there, we have barbecues, we go to vacation, we make sure we create an environment that’s not just a group home,” Redmond says. “We want them to accept their house as their own.”

 She believes it’s this kind of acceptance that’s currently missing from the foster care system.

Though state governments are generally responsive to the needs of children who identify as gay, bisexual or transgender, many young people are reluctant to come out for fear of how their housemates will treat them.

“They don’t feel the possibility of a safe environment,” Redmond said. “If they live in an all-boys house and they show they are gay and transgender, they risk being made fun of.”

 In the nine months that the home has been open, Redmond and her staff have worked to transform the “possibility” of a safe environment into a reality.

“We really work on understanding definitions, understanding what LGBT means, so that our staff understand pronouns, things that kids would like to be called,” Redmond said.

Redmond’s home is one of two LGBT-specific ones that she knows of in Maricopa County, but the other caters only to gay males. She hopes the idea will be used as a pilot program for other group homes around the country.

A spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Child Safety, which currently has 19,000 children in its care, says the department is aware of the need to create LGBT-inclusive spaces and supports homes like Redmond’s.

“We know there’s a fair amount [of LGBT-identifying children] and that number, in terms of identification, is increasing,” said the ADCS’ Dough Nick. “It’s an area that we are very aware of and sensitive to.”