June is PRIDE month!
These amazing kids need and deserve the love and support of affirming, nurturing families! Together, we can ensure ALL youth in foster care – no matter their age, gender, or orientation are connected to LOVING and AFFIRMING lifetime families.
LGBTQ+ youth need families and LGBTQ+ parents make permanent, loving families too!
More than 40% of YGB parents identify as LGBTQ+ and, in our most recent parent training course, 57% of participants identified as such.
Nationwide, LGBTQ+ parents are seven times more likely to adopt and foster children as compared to their straight counterparts.
An estimated 30% of young people in foster care identify as LGBTQ+, many of whom entered care due to rejection from their families because of their identity. Once in foster care, LGBTQ+ youth face higher rates of mistreatments and increased likelihood of being placed in group homes.
44% of LGBTQ+ foster youth reported that they entered foster care as a direct result of their identity.
Since launching the Pride initiative in 2014, You Gotta Believe has proudly focused on two key areas
- Recruiting families—whether they have straight or LGBTQ+ parents—for the many LGBTQ+ youth in foster care; and
- Encouraging couples and individuals who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender to consider adopting young people (who may identify as straight or gay or questioning) and forming permanent loving families.
“It’s changed my life in so many different ways. I feel like I belong somewhere. I feel like my life has meaning now, and I have someone to lean on when I’m not feeling happy. It’s just generally changed my life!