Assessing lesbian and gay prospective foster and adoptive families: a focus on the home study process.

Foster care and adoption by gay men and lesbians is not a new phenomenon. Children and youth have always been placed by states and public agencies in homes with gay and lesbian parents. Some gay men and lesbians have fostered or adopted children independently from private agencies or have made private adoption arrangements with individual birthmothers, while others have fostered or adopted through the public system. Drawing on research literature, practice wisdom from 31 years of child welfare experiences, and case examples, this article offers child welfare professionals guidelines for competent assessment with prospective foster or adoptive parents who identify as lesbian or gay. Lesbians and gay men in the U.S. have created families through adoption (Benkov, 1994), foster care (Martin, 1993), the establishment of kinship networks (Weston, 1991), and a wide variety of other ways. In some cases, lesbians and gay men became parents without disclosing or discussing their sexuality with adoption and foster care agencies. However, as many lesbians and gay men have become able to live their lives more openly, more are considering parenthood in ways they might not have thought possible in the past (Brooks & Goldberg, 2001). For many lesbians and gay men, foster care or adoption is not a second choice, as it may be for heterosexual men and infertile women (Turner, 1999), but rather a first choice. A growing body of research supports the fact that lesbians and gay men make good parents (Golombok, Spencer, & Rutter, 1983; Golombok & Tasker, 1996; Golombok, Tasker, & Murray, 1997; Golombok, Perry, Burston, Murray, Mooney-Somers, & Stevens, 2003; Patterson, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996; Shuster, 2005; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001; Vanfraussen, Ponjaert-Kristofferson, & Brewaeys, 2002, 2003; Wainright & Patterson, 2006; Wainright, Russell, & Patterson, 2004). Lesbians and gay men represent an untapped resource of potential parents for many children and youth who need permanent families. Although lesbians and gay men may have been historically discouraged from fostering or adoption by some, changes in legislation and policy over the past ten years in some states reflect a more open attitude towards them as parents (Pace, 2005; Ryan, Pearlmutter, & Groza, 2004)). Assessment of Lesbian and Gay Foster and Adoptive Families Deciding to adopt or become a foster parent for a child is a huge step. Potential parents are understandably apprehensive about what the process entails-lesbians and gay men, given the history of discrimination against them, may have even greater cause for concern. Overall, far greater numbers of lesbians and gay men have successfully fostered or adopted, but the view that lesbians and gay men will simply be rejected is still a commonly held perception. The Assessment Process The assessment processes for lesbian and gay prospective foster or adoptive parents can become skewed if the assessing worker is either overfocusing on sexuality or totally ignoring it. Sexual orientation cannot be ignored in the assessment process, because an individual's sexuality is an aspect of who he or she is as a total person and will impact on one's life as a parent. What needs to be established early on in the assessment is the applicant's ability to constructively manage homophobia or heterocentrism in his or her own life. There has been a move from the model that has treated gay and lesbian applicants as being the same as their heterosexual counterparts, to acknowledging the different experiences that being a gay or lesbian parent brings to fostering and adoption. As gay and lesbian parents have demonstrated their unique strengths as foster parents and adopters, there has been less need to argue that they 'are just as good as heterosexual parents', with the underlying presumption that the heterosexual model of family life is best. States and child welfare agencies are required by law to cany out a full assessment of applicants before approving them as foster or adoptive parents. …