Today marks the launch of HRC’s All Children — All Families, initiative, “aimed at finding permanent families for foster children by promoting fairness for GLBT families.” They hope to do this by educating adoption and foster care agencies (public and private) about LGBT families, and conversely, by educating the LGBT community about foster and adoptive parenting opportunities.
As part of this new program, the HRC Foundation is offering a “Promising Practices” guide that contains examples of “effective practices for working with GLBT foster and adoptive parents.” It also includes 12 “benchmarks of cultural competence.” Agencies that achieve at least nine of the 12 benchmarks will earn an All Children — All Families Seal and be listed in the initiative’s database. GLBT prospective adoptive and foster parents can use the database to find agencies with expertise in working with GLBT families. On the flip side, agencies that earn the Seal can use it as an education and marketing tool. HRC will also offer tools and assistance in self-assessment, training DVDs, and basic materials for agencies to use in an outreach campaign to the LGBT community.
I think the idea of a seal of approval is basically a sound one, or at least no worse than the many other corporate -rating and -ranking lists, i.e., not bad as a place to start, but not necessarily definitive. Just as corporations can have LGBT-inclusive policies but still have the occasional bad manager, so can adoption and foster care agencies. The bigger problem is that people living outside of large urban areas may not have much choice in the agency they use, and might not have the luxury of looking for one with a good HRC seal of approval. Not to mention that this whole concept won’t fly in, say, Florida, where the law forbids LGBT people from adopting. Still, that’s no reason not to effect change where we can.
The proof of this initiative will be in the implementation, and whether agencies that use HRC’s resources and/or achieve the Seal have better success at placing children with LGBT families. Giving agencies a central place to turn for information and advice is a good first step, however. And yes, I think HRC still has some explaining to do about ENDA—but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing useful work here. As with their Welcoming Schools program, All Children – All Families has the potential to have a positive impact in the daily lives of LGBT families, and that’s a good thing.
(For a personal look at foster parenting, and the financial and emotional costs involved, have a read of Kate’s guest post over at Queercents.)